The Pauper Prince
by paracosim
Summary: "That Awful Boy" sequel! Severus finds that he and Harry are not so different after all, though their friendship may in fact be the death of him. And as Harry comes to find he can place his trust in those around him, it sparks a change that may not only save his life, but the lives of those he loves most.
1. Chapter 1

"So let me get this straight, mate," Ron said through a mouthful of pumpkin pasties. He was chewing obnoxiously loud, making no effort to hide the fact that he'd stuffed two pasties in his mouth at once, and Harry could see Hermione's face becoming stormier and stormier with every passing moment. Oblivious, Ron swallowed with a great effort and sighed in satisfaction. "Let me get this straight. Snape told you your…friendship…was over."

"That's right," Harry said blithely, tearing open a packet of Every Flavor Beans.

"And you think…he was joking."

"Yep."

"Joking. Snape. Harry, you did stay with him, right, and not Lupin?"

"Snape jokes sometimes," Harry said, chewing on a chocolate flavored bean. "They're not nice jokes, but he does do it."

"Harry, you know we're your friends," Hermione said in a rush, "and you know we wouldn't lie to you about something like this, but I think Professor Snape of all people would have been quite serious about ending…your friendship…and, well…"

"You've gone barmy," Ron finished, nodding. He stuffed another pastie into his mouth and set to chewing. This time Hermione didn't even look his way. The power of being agreeable, Harry thought, studying a innocuous blue bean.

They were tucked in the bedroom upstairs, all tousled with spare socks and bits of parchment and unmade beds, to take a moment to themselves. It had been days since they'd all three had a few minutes to talk alone and catch up, what with how hard Mrs. Weasley had been working them around the house, and Harry hadn't had a chance to think let alone share secrets. Tonight, however, the twins had been given the task of after-supper cleanup, and Harry and his friends were able to slip out of the kitchen before Mrs. Weasley could assign them chores. They would just have to make it up to the others later; especially Ginny, who'd given him a burning, envious look as they snuck up the stairs. But that would come later. Right now, they had catching up to do.

And by catching up, Harry meant an intervention.

"We go back tomorrow," Hermione said, tucking her leg underneath her as she shifted positions on his bed. "And Harry, I don't want you doing anything reckless, or insane, or-Harry, are you listening?"

He'd picked a soap bean. Coughing into his hand, Harry looked at her with watering eyes and nodded. "Course."

"Harry…"

"He's a spy, isn't he?" Ron said, lying back against the baseboard of his own bed. His shoes were still on, but he didn't seem to care. "Dumbledore wouldn't want him treating you nicely in front of Malfoy. The little ferret would just tell his dad."

"Exactly," Hermione cut in, leaning forward. "He can't expose himself, and I think if he doesn't treat you nicely, well, maybe you'll take it badly and then you'll do something…"

"Barmey."

"Guys," Harry interrupted. He kicked Ron's leg and bumped shoulders with Hermione, grinning. "It's all right. Just…calm down. I know what I'm doing, you'll see. Everything will be just fine."

the pauper prince

On the evening of Harry Potter's return to Hogwarts, Severus Snape was met with a bad omen that came in the form of Wilhelmina Grubby-Plank.

The day had dawned bright and cool, with a sky so overcast it could only mean there would be rain in the coming days, and a castle so peaceful he could almost fool himself it would last. The House-Elves had been swept up in a frenzy of cleaning and cooking, and the resulting heat resonating from the kitchens below had made the Great Hall of the castle unbearably hot. Severus was already sweating in his robes by the time the carriages arrived and the little dunderheads began filing in.

Hagrid was nowhere to be seen. His seat at the staff table was empty, no one seemed to know where he had gone, and Albus seemed no more inclined to reveal his whereabouts than his grand plans for the war. And considering Hagrid was one of the few on the faculty whose company Severus genuinely enjoyed, he was in a foul mood. He'd spent the day cooped up in last second faculty meetings; and after that, in his chambers to half-heartedly clear the dust that had accumulated there, because he'd forbidden the elves from cleaning there years ago. His favorite armchair in the staff room had disappeared. The coffee he kept stored in his rooms had gone off. And then came the new posting to the Defense Against the Dark Arts position, and his foul mood became fouler still.

She was from the Ministry, and Severus knew her somehow, but couldn't place the face or the name. The toad wore all pink, short and squat with coiffed brown hair and a bow that rather resembled a fly, and her voice was so girlish and honeyed it pierced his ears and made his head throb with the promise of a ten-month-long headache. Her eyes bulged so grotesquely Severus was quite certain that if he applied pressure to her neck, he might be able to pop them out of the socket with minimal effort.

This fantasy swam in his head all throughout the Sorting. It remained glued to his retinas all throughout dinner. And when Dolores Umbridge stood to interrupt Albus's speech to spill her own tired tripe, Severus could practically taste her blood in his mouth-and there was certainly blood, because he'd bitten through his tongue in order to stifle a half-hysterical laugh.

The hall was silent, but not in a way that meant they'd been called to attention; instead, the students were smirking at one another, nudging their fellows with their elbows with evil glints to their eyes…and Severus knew it would be a very long year.

"Thank you, Headmaster," Umbridge simpered, "for those kind words of welcome."

For the first time that evening, Severus allowed his gaze to rake over Gryffindor table. He came to rest on the boy in seconds. But to his surprise, Potter wasn't looking his way at all; instead, he was glaring intently at Umbridge, hatred plain on his face.

"Well, it is lovely to be back at Hogwarts, I must say!" Her teeth were very pointed, like that of some dangerous creature. It wasn't an unfair assessment. "And to see such happy little faces looking back at me!"

From down the table, Minerva caught his eye. Her lips were pursed so tightly he thought they might vanish if she wasn't careful. Severus couldn't resist the twitch at the corner of his mouth, but he quashed the urge to fully smile as he turned back to the students, all humor fleeing at the very sight of them.

"-unique to the Wizarding community must be passed down through the generations lest we lose them forever. The treasure trove of magical knowledge amassed by our ancestors must be guarded, replenished, and polished by those who have been called to the noble profession of teaching."

Once, some years ago, Severus had been forced to assist Pomfrey in a case where a sixth-year student had shoved a stirring rod up their arse, only to be burned by the residue of an unidentified potion. There was nothing noble about any of the shit Severus had to deal with on a regular basis. The only thing he had ever seen polished was the little pustules's abilities to get themselves in trouble.

"-stagnation and decay. There again, progress for progress's sake must be discouraged, for our tried and tested traditions often require no tinkering. A balance, then, between old and new, between permanence of change, between tradition and innovation…"

Much of the children had long since ceased to pay attention. Some, like Macmillan, sat with a heavy glaze over their faces, blank-eyed and drowsy. Others had magazines and copies of the Prophet held high to shield their eyes from Umbridge's visage. And yet others still were unashamedly holding court with their friends, chatting amongst themselves as though they weren't being told crucial details of their near future. Even Potter had contented himself to study the faces in the crowd, pale-faced and drowsy.

I will break him of that, Severus promised himself, already dreaming of the lessons on paying attention to enemies-and then stopped himself short, because summer was over, and he and Potter hated each other anyway. Whatever tentative alliance they'd built was gone. It was over.

"…because some changes will be for the better, while others will come, in fullness of time, to be recognized as errors of judgement. Meanwhile, some old habits will be retrained, and rightly so, whereas others, outmoded and outworn, must be abandoned. Let us move forward, then, into a new era of openness, effectiveness, and accountability, intent on preserving what ought to be preserved, perfecting what needs to be perfected, and pruning wherever we find practices that ought to be prohibited."

Severus clapped only twice before returning to the cup of coffee he'd managed to keep from the elves, wrapping his fingers round the remaining dregs of warmth. There was an aborted attempt at applause scattered throughout the hall, but it was short-lived, because Albus was already standing and the focus of the students snapped back once more.

"Thank you very much, Professor Umbridge," Albus said with a bow. There was a genial smile on his face, but it didn't reach his eyes, nor did it last any longer than the instant that he turned back to the hall. "Now-as I was saying…"

Illuminating. That was one word for the propaganda they'd been gifted. Illuminating.

The hall roared with a clatter of noise as the students were dismissed, and as they filed out bit by bit, Severus didn't miss the odd look Potter gave him before he slipped out of sight.

Illuminating, indeed.

"Look at today!" Ron groaned as he pored over the day's schedule. "History of Magic, double Potions, Divinations, double Defense Against the Dark Arts…blimey. Binns, Snape, Trelawney, and that Umbridge woman all in one day. I wish Fred and George'd hurry up and get those Skiving Snackboxes sorted…"

As if they were a pair of djinn to be summoned by name, the twins appeared. George threw an arm over Harry's shoulders as Fred squeezed his way onto the bench, pushing aside a second year. George eased his way in after. "Do mine ears deceive me?" Fred said, stealing one of Hermione's slices of toast. "Hogwarts prefects surely don't wish to skive off lessons?"

"Not me," Hermione said primly, reaching for another slice to replenish what she'd lost.

"Look what we've got today," Ron sighed, waving his schedule. "That's the worst Monday I've ever seen."

Fred and George exchanged looks at the sight of it. "Fair point, little bro," Fred said through a mouthful of toast. "Well, you can have a bit of Nosebleed Nougat cheap if you like."

"Why's it cheap?"

"Because you'll keep bleeding till you shrivel up, and we haven't got an antidote yet," George replied, joining Fred in taking one of Hermione's kippers. Harry couldn't help but wonder how many blood replenishing potions they'd downed since the Nougat's creation, but before he could ask, Hermione launched into a lecture about hiring first years as test subjects, and the matter was dropped before it could ever fully form. And finally, unable to help himself any longer, Harry turned to gaze up at the staff table.

Snape had arrived, though he didn't look happy for it. He sat glowering at the world, with shadows under his eyes like caverns and hair as lank as ever, and was drinking what Harry suspected might be coffee. He'd been seated next to Umbridge, he realized with a pang of sympathy. Umbridge had set into her breakfast with a nauseating sort of gusto and appeared to be oblivious to all around her. What did Snape think of her? What had he thought about her speech last night? No doubt he'd come to the same conclusion as Hermione, but-

"We seriously debated whether we were going to bother coming back for our seventh year," George said casually, "now that we've got—"

Harry jolted back to attention just in time to give George a warning look.

"—now that we've got our O.W.L.s," he corrected hastily, "because, I mean, do we really need N.E.W.T.s?"

Ron and Hermione stared but said nothing. Harry, feeling rather red in the face, dropped his knife and bent to retrieve it. When he emerged, the moment had passed and everything was fine again. He sighed and tried not to look suspicious.

History of Magic trooped by slowly, with Hermione fuming, Harry and Ron playing hangman, and Binns droning on without inflection.

"How would it be," Hermione said coldly when they'd stepped outside to wait for the bell, "if I refused to lend you my notes this year?"

While Ron soothed Hermione's temper, Harry stood lost in thought, imagining himself as an Auror with Ron-and then, if he chose that path, what Snape would think. He'd be furious, probably.

"What do you think he'll set for us?" Ron asked, elbowing him in the side.

"What?" Harry asked, looking up. They'd turned the collars of their robes up to ward off the chill and the damp, huddling under a balcony in the courtyard away from the others. "Sorry."

"Snape, for the first lesson. What do you think he'll set us up with?"

"Well," he said slowly, "we had that essay on Moonstones, didn't we?"

"Harry, I forgot to tell you how pleased I was to know you'd finished yours so early," Hermione said in a rush, eyes shining.

Harry met Ron's eye and smiled. "Right. Well, I suppose it would be something to do with that. Probably something hard, to surprise us."

Hermione was already muttering to herself about potential potions they'd be making, reaching to her bag like she was about to open up her new books and search for the answer. Before Ron or Harry could even attempt to dissuade her, Cho Chang rounded the corner, and all thoughts of Snape left Harry's head in an instant.

"Hello, Harry!"

She was on her own for the second time in a matter of days. Normally, she was with a group of friends. Until yesterday, Harry had never seen her without them.

"Oh, hi," he said, and then remembered with horrible clarity the way she'd found him on the train the day before; covered in Stinksap and sitting with Neville and Luna Lovegood. "Er-"

Cho smiled and gestured towards him, a little stiffly, like she knew what he'd been thinking about. Harry tried and failed to smile back. "You got that stuff off, then?"

"Yeah," he said, and then for lack of anything better to say, "So did you…er…have a good summer?"

He wished he'd thought of something better, because at the mention of summer, Cho's smile faded completely. Her eyes looked tight at the corners. "Oh," she said casually, though her arms had drawn close to her sides, "it was all right. You know…"

"Is that a Tornados badge you're wearing?" Ron said suddenly, pointing an accusing finger Cho's way. "You don't support them, do you?"

Ron, not now, Harry thought desperately, but the damage was done, and Cho was no longer interested in anything any of them had to say.

As she walked away, Hermione turned to Ron and hissed, "You are so tactless!" and their arguing began anew. And then the bell rang, and already Harry was wishing he could just go back to bed.

"Settle down," Severus said as he entered the classroom, shutting the door behind him.

The room fell to silence at once, and he was grateful for it. He'd risen from a sleepless night with a pounding headache that had been only exacerbated by his ever-looming lessons for the day.

"Before we begin today's lesson," he said, sweeping his way to his desk and turning round to glare at them all, "I think it appropriate to remind you that next June you'll be sitting an important examination, during which you will prove how much you have learned about the composition and use of magical potions…or your lack thereof. Moronic thought some of this class undoubtedly are, I expect you to scrape an 'Acceptable' in your O.W.L., or suffer my…displeasure."

As thought drawn by a magnetic force, Severus's aching eyes landed on Longbottom, who blanched.

Good, he thought, clenching his jaw. Let that sink in.

"After this year, of course," he went on, "many of you will cease studying with me. I take only the best into my N.E.W.T. Potions class, which means that some of us will certainly be saying goodbye."

He resisted the urge to look at the boy, though he could feel Potter's eyes burning through him.

"But we have another year to go before that happy moment of farewell," he finished, "so whether you are intending to attempt N.E.W.T. or not, I advise all of you to concentrate your efforts upon maintaining the high-pass level I have come to expect from my O.W.L. students."

On that note, he took a deep breath and flicked his wand towards the blackboard, conjuring up the day's lesson. As he issued his warnings for the Draught of Peace, he waved his wand towards the store cupboard, which opened with a squeal of hinges, and then set them to begin brewing.

It took only an hour of their allotted time for Longbottom to fuck something up, and as Severus swept over to him to ensure the little idiot wasn't about to blow them all up, he couldn't help but to glance at Potter, who was deep in concentration and sweating profusely. His potion, Severus noted next, was already ruined.

Later, he told himself darkly.

"Longbottom," he said, coming to a stop over the smoking cauldron of his least favorite student, "I have not prayed in many years, but your never-ending failures in my classroom are rapidly driving me to do so."

He lifted the half-dissolved stirring rod and watched as grey sludge oozed down the side. It was fortunate the brew hadn't exploded; Longbottom had obviously forgotten the syrup of hellebore, and he'd added something else…an extra handful of powdered porcupine quills?

"Tell me," he said softly, letting the rod clatter back into the cauldron with a dispassionate sneer. "How long do you add porcupine quills for? Until it turns red? Or, perhaps, as you seem to believe-until it turns grey?"

Longbottom didn't speak. His face was pale and lips were pressed so tightly together they'd almost disappeared. He wrung his hands together and dared a peek at his cauldron, which issued a great belch before falling silent. Severus felt his temper rise steadily higher.

"And how long," he said, more quietly, "did you add them for? Until it turned grey? As it says on the board, you are to add them until the potion turns red. Are you blind, Longbottom? Did your family allow you to drink dittany one too many times as a child? Or do you simply revel in causing as much destruction as you can, wherever you go?"

"N-no, sir—"

"Then tell me, boy, why you cannot seem to grasp even the most simple instructions," he said coldly. He planted his hands on the table and leaned forward, so that their faces were a mere foot away. "I realize you may not be capable of understanding this, but on the board are the only instructions you should be following. If you insist on following the book, you will fail, and I shan't pity you for it."

He left Longbottom there without a backwards glance, but Severus didn't feel any better. If anything, he felt worse. His headache was throbbing behind his eyes like someone was smashing an anvil into his brain. He needed a cigarette.

"A light silver vapor should now be rising from your potion," he called as they reached the final stretch.

His words seemed to send some of the children into a frenzy, because the classroom was suddenly full of muttering and half-heard threats aimed towards unruly potions. Only some of them remained unfazed. Draco Malfoy was among them; he was breathing hard over his cauldron but seemed otherwise unaffected by their dwindling time. His potion was silvery and unsullied. Severus nodded approvingly but didn't speak, focusing instead on the dark grey clouds billowing from the back of the room, where Potter had set up camp with Granger and Weasley.

"Potter," he said as he loomed over the boy, "what is this supposed to be?"

He didn't have to turn in order to know his Slytherins had looked up to watch the show. They'd always reveled in these sorts of things, even back when he was a student. The year may have changed, but the attitude had not.

"The Draught of Peace," Harry said shortly, not meeting his eyes.

"Tell me, Potter," he said softly, "can you read?"

Draco laughed behind him but the rest of the room was quiet.

"Yes, I can," Potter ground out.

"Read the third line of the instructions for me, then."

For a moment, it seemed as though the boy might not obey, but then he finally looked up to squint through the steam. "'Add powdered moonstone, stir three times counterclockwise, allow to simmer for seven minutes…" He seemed to take a deep breath. "And then add two drops of syrup of hellebore.'"

We discussed this, Severus wanted to bite out, but refrained. It was in your essay.

"Did you do everything on the third line?" he said instead, feeling the rush of blood in his veins, racing with caffeine-fueled anger.

Potter said something under his breath, but it was too quiet to make out. Severus closed his eyes for a moment and said, "I beg your pardon?"

"I said no. I forgot the hellebore…"

"I know you did, Potter, which means that this mess is utterly worthless. Evan-" He trailed off before he could finish the spell, because for the first time Potter had looked at him, and on his face was an expression of undeniable hurt. Blindsided, Severus stood with his wand half-raised and his mouth partly open, before he snapped it shut and said coldly, "Yes? What is it?"

"Nothing," Potter said bitterly, staring at his potion again. "Sir."

Shame rose in Severus quite suddenly, piercing and sick, though he quelled it ruthlessly and barked, "Fill one flagon with a sample of your potion, label it clearly with your name, and bring it to my desk for testing."

He'd set them their homework and had turned to go to his desk when his foot snagged on a bag in the aisle and he stumbled forward, catching himself on Potter's table. The boy's book and leftover ingredients smashed on the floor and the cauldron would have tipped if Severus hadn't the forethought to grab the rim. The heat of it burned his fingers, searing into his skin like he'd held it over an open flame, but he didn't let go until the danger had passed. Giggles erupted through the room as he righted himself, but when he turned to glare at them all, the laughter died like it had never happened. Potter was staring at him, wide-eyed, with his mouth slightly open. And suddenly, every bit of emotion Severus had been suppressing for the last week came bubbling to the surface, like water boiling over a pan.

"Er—sir," Potter began, but Severus cut him off.

"Detention!" he snarled, slamming his burnt hand onto the boy's table. Potter jumped. "Ten points from Gryffindor!"

"What?" the boy burst out, jumping to his feet and knocking his chair back. "What for? I didn't do anything!"

"Five more points for insolence!" he snapped back. Potter seemed to restrain himself with a great effort, but as he crouched to retrieve the ingredients for his slowly congealing potion, Severus would have been hard-pressed to miss his muttered, "fucking prat."

He forced himself to turn away before he could say something to the little bastard that he would come to regret, likely when Albus summoned him to his office and scolded him for his temper.

Well, perhaps if you hadn't been such a cunt, he thought darkly, before the bell rang at last and he was, blessedly, alone.

For the rest of the evening, Harry couldn't quite bring himself to find interest in anything around him, but Ron and Hermione didn't press him. They'd been exchanging worried glances all throughout dinner, and now, as they settled themselves in the common room with their essay assignments and a game of Exploding Snap, Hermione finally broached the subject.

"You know, Harry," she said quietly, "maybe he wasn't serious."

"He seemed pretty serious to me," Ron muttered, and Harry shrugged.

"Enough, Ron," Hermione snapped. "Haven't you done enough today?"

Ron had already begun to open his mouth and retaliate, but at Harry's sigh, he stopped and slumped in his seat. "Sorry," he said to Harry, who only shrugged again. "She's right, you know. He can't act like your, er, friend while everyone else is around, can he? He has to keep his act up. Dumbledore would probably murder him if he messed things up now, with You-Know-Who back and all."

"Yeah," Harry said, staring at the fire roaring in the hearth.

"Give it time," Hermione said with an imploring look. "Harry, it's only our first day back, and neither of you have had any time to adjust, or prepare yourselves. I'm sure he felt bad about it."

Harry couldn't take sitting here any longer. Getting to his feet, he began to gather up his books. "I'm going to go to bed," he said to the others. "Think I'm going to turn in early."

Ron didn't appear in their dorm until after Harry had already climbed into bed and settled back against his pillows with Snow Crash in his hands. Undressing in silence, Ron sat down on his bed and said, "It'll be all right."

Frowning at his book but not responding, Harry opened it to a random page and began to skim. Ron was quiet for a time.

"You know," he said at last, pulling his legs up to his chest and watching Harry page through Snow Crash, "with the way you were talking, I thought maybe things had changed. You know…between the two of you."

Harry closed the book and shoved it under his pillow. It hurt to look at it, all of a sudden. "Yeah," he said, and then rolled over to stare at his drapes. "Yeah, Ron, I thought so, too."


	2. Chapter 2

News of his double set of detentions spread quickly through the halls, and by breakfast of the next morning, whispers had begun to tail him like a wildfire creeping towards a forest. But unlike the day before, his classmates were now making no attempt now to hide away from him or keep the rumors at a low volume. Today they no longer cared whether he heard. And sometimes, when Harry walked past a particularly raucous crowd, he thought they all might have welcomed him getting angry, just so they could hear firsthand what had happened that night in the graveyard, unabridged by Dumbledore or the Prophet.

It was infuriating.

What right did they have to demand details about the night Cedric was murdered? When they thought he was insane to call it murder? What right did they have to demand he give them what they wanted, even if it made him queasy and shaky—just because they wanted to know and judge what he'd been through? What he'd seen happen?

"What I don't get," he said, in a voice so low and waspish he wasn't sure either Ron or Hermione could even hear him, "is why they all believed the story two months ago when Dumbledore told them."

"The thing is, Harry, I'm not sure they did," Hermione said in a grim undertone. "Oh, let's get out of here."

They were gathering their books when the owls swooped in to deliver the day's mail, and as Ron stood and gave the remnants of his breakfast a mournful look, Harry automatically squinted into the mass of birds flying overhead in an effort to spot Hedwig. He didn't have long to look before she dove down and perched herself on his shoulder to give his ear an affectionate nip.

"Hi, Hedwig," he said, scratching her head with one hand and trying to untie the letter she'd brought him with the other. It dropped to the floor once released; he stepped on it to ensure no one would make a grab at it and leaned over to fish out a bit of bacon from his plate. Hedwig launched herself from his shoulder after quickly preening his hair, and was quickly lost in the glare of the sunlight shining down through the ceiling.

"Expecting a letter?" Ron asked, and then hesitated, looking around like he thought they might have been under watch. Not that they weren't, Harry thought dully, because Snape hadn't looked away from him once the entire time they'd been in the Great Hall. "Maybe from…"

"Hagrid?" Harry finished, stooping to retrieve it. He brushed away the smudge his shoe had left and peeled open the seal on the parchment. Maybe it was Hagrid. Maybe it was, even though he really hadn't been expecting a letter, because who would be writing him? It had only been a day since he'd last seen Sirius, and he'd cancelled his subscription to the Prophet during his stint in Cokeworth, so who—?

Snape. It was from Snape. And not in the way he'd been hoping, even if he wouldn't admit it to himself, but was instead a detailing of his detention. And that was all fine and good, he figured, until he remembered only a moment later that he had the first of his detentions with Umbridge that very same evening.

"Think you've got a spare bit of Time Turner lying around, Hermione?" Harry asked, holding the letter out to her with a groan. "Because I reckon I'm going to need it."

—

"Close the door behind you," was all Snape said when Harry entered his office that evening. He didn't look up from the essay he was marking to hell and back; and Harry stood there and stared, wondering if it was his and Snape was trying to prove a point. When the silence had stretched on for too long, Snape finally looked up with an exasperated expression and said, "The door, Potter. Close it and take a seat."

The condescension in his voice reminded Harry why he hadn't wanted to come. "For the record, I didn't fucking trip you," he said angrily as he closed the door with a sharp snap, "if that's what you're getting at, Snape."

To Harry's immense relief, Snape didn't even blink. "That would be clear to anyone with a pair of eyes and a working brain. Sit, Potter."

For a moment he struggled with himself, veering between sitting down and storming right back out, before finally he dropped into the chair in front of Snape's desk with a sigh. "What d'you mean?" he asked in a low voice when Snape didn't speak again. He was scribbling furiously. "By…that was clear?"

"Of course you didn't trip me." Scrawling a note in the margins of the essay—not Harry's, but Ron's—he set his quill down and muttered, "Would you have preferred a night with Umbridge?"

"I—you talked to her?" he asked, wringing the strap of his bag between his fingers and reaching up to scratch at the place where it had been digging into his shoulder. The second letter had come as a surprise, arriving late in the afternoon to find him pacing the common room and dreading the night ahead, and had come from Umbridge herself. His detentions were to be moved back by a single day and no more. "I'd wondered…Erm. What did she say? What did you tell her?"

"Nothing unexpected." Then, to Harry's horror, he adopted a higher pitch and began to imitate her. It was not a bad imitation, and that only made it worse. "'Potter knows, deep down, he needs punished. He's a nasty little boy who lies for attention.'"

"That's a load of shit," Harry said, trying to shake the sound of Snape's Umbridge voice from his head. "That's shit, and you know it."

"Obviously," Snape said. He raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair.

"How'd you convince her to give the night to you?" he asked. What strings had Snape had to pull?

"First come, first serve," he said shortly. He was chewing a thumbnail and eyeing one of the jars off to Harry's right, which contained something so slimy and jointless, he could no more guess at what it was than he could its purpose, original or otherwise. "I was not able to secure the rest of your week, however, so you'll still have to attend the rest of your detentions with her. Not even I could dissuade her from that."

"Er…right. Thanks? What did you want to talk to me about, then, if this isn't a real detention?" he asked, setting his bag on the floor at last. He wouldn't be leaving anytime soon. Not after Snape had invited him in and allowed him back into his life. Even if it was only for one night, just two hours.

"Me? You're the one who has been giving me doleful eyes from across the room, Potter, since your arrival here." Snape looked oddly at ease, but the twitching of his fingers made Harry think that he might have been just as nervous as he was. It was an odd thought—Snape nervous. "That's a question for yourself. Not for me."

"I haven't…" Harry trailed off when he realized that yes, he very well might have been. "Well—maybe I have. I was just…wondering, I suppose, if maybe you'd changed your mind about…things being different now."

Snape didn't speak for a time. When Harry had only just begun to think he might not answer at all, he said, "I cannot expose myself as a spy."

"Right," Harry said bracingly, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. "Right. I know that."

There was another pause, longer than the first. The silence was so thick it quite nearly hummed from the intensity of it, and Harry felt as though the walls were shrinking slowly to encase him in stone. The lamps flickered green against the shadows Snape left on the shelves behind him, lining him in an eerie glow. Harry gulped.

"But…" he began, trying to muster up some semblance of hope, even though his stomach felt like it was falling into a pit as black and cold as Snape's shadow.

"But I…" Snape stopped, frowned so faintly it was almost imperceptible, and said, "But perhaps if we're…subtle."

Harry couldn't stop himself from smiling. His hands were gripping the edges of his chair so tightly he could feel himself getting splinters.

"Letters are out of the question," Snape said. The words were quiet enough that Harry thought they might have been meant only for himself. "Too many eyes, too many uncontrolled variables. An enchanted parchment could…Floo is under watch…"

It was all very exciting, in an odd sort of way, to be part of something so secret. Snape didn't seem to share in the excitement. There was a feverish haze to him that Harry recognized from his days at Spinner's End; when Snape got that look to him, an emotional eruption usually wasn't far off.

"Er—" Harry tried a smile when Snape's attention jumped back to him. "I have my cloak, you know. Well…of course you know. And my dad's map."

"Yes," Snape said slowly, eyes hardening. He struck a very impressive figure where he was; he'd angled his chair to the side and propped a leg on one knee, and had bitten his nail down to the quick. His expression was cold and Harry had the sudden thought that this was what he'd expected to find upon arriving at Hogwarts five years ago. Dark, powerful mages dressed in black, ready to fight at a moment's notice. "Yes, your father's map."

"Sorry about that," Harry hastened to say. He began bouncing one leg and tried to look as cool and collected as the wizard in front of him. Instead of feeling impressive, however, he only felt sweaty. "About that night, you know…"

"What does it do?"

"What?"

"The map. What is its purpose? From what I remember, it was rather devoted in insulting those who attempted to use it, and I was never given the chance to truly see it."

Harry hesitated. Then he reached into his bag and withdrew the Marauder's Map, laying it flat on the desk between them. He tapped it with his wand and said, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

As the map's true form crept across the parchment like blood oozing from thin cuts, Snape sat upright and leaned forward, hissing between his teeth. He didn't speak until the map had finished its transformation. However, Harry could see his eyes following every move on the page in front of them, drinking it in like a rare source of water found in a blazing desert. He'd drawn so close his nose was close to touching the map. And then, at last, he spoke.

"I," Snape said with a note of finality, "am fucking going to kill Remus Lupin."

—

When the letter came, Severus was in the bath.

He'd spent the better part of their first day back preparing for his lessons. He'd dusted the cupboards, rearranged his potions ingredients, and cleared his throat enough times that he'd damn near made himself hoarse instead of intimidating. It was only when his classroom was put back to the way he preferred it kept that he felt prepared for classes.

The first years were easy enough. Though not a tall man, he loomed over the children, and had always found scaring them an easy task. It didn't take much time before they were cowed by his presence. That was good. That gave him back the sense of control he'd craved all summer long.

Then came the fifth years, sending that control down the drain.

He hadn't meant to snap at Potter. By now, he could take it for the gift it had been in order to bring them together long enough to discuss future plans, but until the boy's detention, Severus had been…ashamed. The night had done them both good. Harry had left with a spring in his step that hadn't been there since the day he'd gone into the Pensieve.

Though it was a Saturday, Severus had been attending to a never-ending list of Head of House duties: attempting (and failing) to comfort the homesick first years, subtly threatening his more unruly Slytherins so that they might behave themselves, and setting study circles so that the students might actually fill the empty space between their ears this year instead of eating their weight in Hogsmeade fudge and playing with fake wands—or themselves. It was late in the day when he had a chance to retire to his rooms, close his office hours, and hate himself in peace.

He took dinner alone. After the events of the day before, Severus couldn't quite bring himself to eat with the rest of the school; Potter would be there. Potter, with Lily's eyes, and the same expression his long-dead friend had worn whenever he said or did something hurtful.

It was going to be a long year.

It was well over an hour after curfew had ticked by when Severus found the will to haul himself off his sofa and into the adjoining bathroom to have a wash. He'd gotten so far as to run the bath, undress, and submerge himself fully in the water when there came a great clatter from the sitting room, and he emerged with a gasp to fumbled for the wand he'd left on the toilet seat. Water streamed down his face and his hair ran into his eyes like lines of ink on paper as he sat upright and crouched in the water.

"Albus?" he called after a time, reaching for his towel with his free hand. "Is that you?"

There was no response, but there didn't need to be, because in the next moment an owl came swooping through the doorway to deposit a scroll of parchment onto the floor. Severus stared at it. The sound of his panting was very loud in the silence.

The owl didn't move from its perch atop his door. Waiting, then, on a reply. Severus leaned forward to dry his hands on his towel and reached for the letter. It unraveled easily at his touch and sat, like a slug, on the floor. It was written in Lupin's curving handwriting.

I want to apologize, it read.

Severus didn't waste any time. He summoned a quill and scrawled, Bugger off, before thrusting it towards the owl and watching it fly away, letter in his beak.

The room was quiet once more, punctuated only by the steady plop of the leaky tap, and the movement of the water as Severus cast a heating charm and lay back again to submerge his head anew. When his lungs began to burn, he pulled himself out of his heat-induced trance and sat up to soak.

He'd begun to relax again, shoulders eased back against the side of the tub and one hand drifting lazily downward, when there came a second clatter from the room beyond.

Motherfucking—

Severus glared hatefully at the new owl that had come soaring in. But when it dropped a scroll—the same scroll—he paused and peered at the blasted thing through the steam. It was the same owl.

"How did—?" he began, before trailing off with a shake of his head. He wiped his hands dry again and reached for the letter.

Can we talk?

He picked up the quill again. No, he wrote, and then crossed that out. Then he wrote it again before tearing away the bottom half of the note entirely. Above the shorn edges of the parchment, he scribbled a quick, When? and sent it on its way.

Not ten minutes had passed when the owl returned for a third time bearing a letter that only said, Now.

Severus rushed to wash, scouring himself until his very pores throbbed. He scrubbed his hair at a rapid pace that left him feeling just as oily as he had before, and then hauled himself out of the still-warm water to stumble to the sink and brush his teeth until his gums wept crimson. He was wavering between dressing and clipping his nails when a new letter arrived bearing only three words: I'm at Hogsmeade.

In under five minutes, he was out the door and rushing to the edge of the forest, where he Disapparated with a crack.


	3. Chapter 3

"Godric and Jesus, did you run all the way here?"

When Severus entered the Three Broomsticks, Remus had to do a double-take in order to fully drink him in. He looked like he'd dressed in a great hurry, all half-tied shoes and rumpled robes, and his wet hair had smeared itself across the side of his face and neck. Remus could see it dripping like ink into his eyes where he'd apparently tried to push it away from his face and failed. But although his appearance was haphazard, Severus strode towards him as confidently as ever, straight-backed and carefully controlled with his robes billowing behind him, commanding the attention of everyone in the room. He slid into the chair opposite Remus and glowered.

"Don't be an idiot," he said flatly, casting a silent, unknown spell and turning to face him with a grimace. He'd already pulled his foot onto the chair to retie his shoe. "I Apparated."

_And I know you're not fond of Apparition. _Remus watched him with open curiosity. "Taking a dip in the lake, then, were you?"

"Don't be an _idiot, _I said. And you might have bothered to tell me _where_ in Hogsmeade, Lupin, and spared me from searching. Aberforth must think I've gone daft."

"Ah—yes, I might have, sorry. I thought you would've come here first. I know you and Lily often sat here together during our Hogsmeade weekends."

At the dangerous look on Severus's face, and the way his fingers twitched as though longing to close them around Remus's throat, he fell silent. And for a long stretch of time, neither of them spoke again.

The Three Broomsticks was quiet at such a late hour, but by no means was it empty; couples and friends grouped around the gleaming tables, their faces flickering bronze in the firelight, and at the bar was a smattering of witches smoking long pipes and gossiping loudly. No one had so much as looked their way since they'd settled themselves in a secluded corner. For that, Remus was immensely relieved he'd chosen Hogsmeade in lieu of Diagon Alley. There was no doubt that Severus would not have come so willingly if there was any chance he'd be gawked at all evening.

"You asked me here?" the man in question said at last, in a tone more biting than curious. He'd lowered both feet to the floor and was cutting a quick glance from side to side, like he was searching for onlookers—or spies. His face was cast half in shadow, the other lit warmly and still sullen, like he'd been dragged inside against his will.

"Yes." Remus blinked to clear his head and took a deep breath. "Yes, I did. I wanted to apologize to you."

"For what?"

_Where to begin? _he thought dryly, and more than a little self-deprecatingly. "Take your pick, Severus. I'm sure they'd all be correct."

"As I've said before, you are a self-sacrificing fool who would willingly take blame for the bubonic plague. So, Lupin, specify for me: for _what?_"

_When did you ever say that? _It was a little disconcerting to think that Severus Snape spoke about him to others; and even more so to think that perhaps not all of it might have been bad. But to whom had he spoken? Albus? _Harry?_

And for what, then, _was_ he apologizing? For invading Severus's privacy time after time? For not being entirely clear about his intentions with someone so socially inept? For dragging out a past Severus had clearly wished would remain buried and forgotten? "For endangering your position that day," he said at last, choosing the easiest one, like the coward he was deep down. "I should never have come when you sent that Patronus. For all I knew, you were playing host to the Malfoys, or even Volde—_him_."

"The Dark Lord would never lower himself to visit my Muggle dung heap," Severus said, and though the words were dry, his dark eyes were now locked on Remus's face. Bright and attentive.

Remus tried not to smile. "Either way, I should never have come, let alone brought everyone with me. I should have sent a message to Albus and let him handle the situation as he saw fit. That was my mistake, Severus. I'm sorry for putting you and Harry in danger."

"You aiding the boy in causing dangerous situations is entirely unnecessary," Severus agreed, "because Harry is quite capable of doing so himself and doesn't need any further help."

"Well, yes, and—" Remus stopped, letting the words sink in. "You called him…you…"

"Are you ill, Lupin?" Severus said, now chewing on his thumbnail like it was the only thing keeping him sane. "Or are you giving me your best Longbottom imitation?"

_Let it go, _Remus told himself, even though he burned to say something_. Just let it go._

Taking a closer look at Severus through the dim lighting, Remus watched the way his hands shook minutely, and how the ends of his hair had begun to curl upwards from the heat of the pub. "How much"—_coffee have you had today? _he started to ask, before realizing it would be a mistake and saying instead, "Have you eaten today?"

Severus continued chewing on his thumbnail, even though it was very obviously already bitten down to the quick, and made no move to speak or acknowledge the question at all. Remus waited patiently and was at last rewarded with a quiet, "I could eat."

His chair grated against the stone floor as he pushed away from the table. "Soup, then?" he said hurriedly. "Something light?"

But before Severus could reply, Remus had already stepped away to order food and make idle chit-chat with Rosmerta. He kept a close eye on their table, noting the book that suddenly appeared the moment he'd left, and the intensity in which Severus was studying it; absorbed, as always, in anything that revolved around learning.

"Where had you been keeping that?" Remus said lowly as he returned with two bowls full of steaming soup, and large flagons of butterbeer.

"Fuck off, werewolf," Severus snapped, without any real heat to it. He reached into his robes and rummaged about before pulling out a tiny white vial full of a shimmering substance Remus couldn't identify. Sprinkling it over his soup, Severus reached across the table and tipped the rest into Remus's bowl, which glittered blue for an instant before fading away like it had never been. Then he tucked in to his meal with a gusto that would have been shocking if Remus hadn't had the dubious pleasure of seeing his eating habits firsthand over the holiday.

"Were you testing it for poison?" Remus asked in disbelief.

"And other tamperings."

_Paranoid bastard, _Remus thought, and took a sip of his own soup with a shake of his head.

Severus's bowl was nearing empty when he finally asked, "What is this?"

"Cream of mushroom, I think," Remus said, reluctantly taking Severus's untouched butterbeer for himself. They ate in companionable silence as the fire burned lower and lower in the grate, and the dull buzz of conversation turned into the soft clinking of glasses as the pub emptied and Rosmerta started on washing up for the night. The unoccupied chairs around them lifted themselves onto the tables and a mop began scurrying across the floor, knocking into Severus's shins and earning itself a glare. Remus bent over his drink to hide a grin.

"It's late," he said when a clock chimed and he realized it was now past midnight. "You have a faculty meeting in the morning, don't you?"

"Not till next Saturday," Severus mumbled around the last dregs of his soup. He stilled quite suddenly, and Remus resisted the urge to glance around for whatever had created the tense line of his shoulders, and the tight press of his lips. Just when the wait was becoming unbearable, Severus said ungraciously to his empty bowl, "You could stay."

Remus stared. His pulse was very loud in his ears and his body felt rather foreign to him, like he'd been ejected from it and left to float away towards the ceiling. Then, not daring to believe his own ears, he leaned forward and said, "I can't afford a night here."

"Don't play the fool. You know what I meant, wolf." Severus was glaring so fiercely at the table, that in his dazed state, Remus thought it might just splinter in front of them.

"I don't know if that's a good idea," he said next.

Exhaling hard, Severus snarled, "Why not?"

Remus's mind teemed with uncomfortable lines of thought and disastrous scenarios. _Because I don't know what sort of state of mind you're in that would make you say this. Because it's inappropriate. Because I'm afraid I'll somehow irreparably destroy something that has only just begun. _"Dolores Umbridge," Remus decided on. "Because if a student were to see me—if the _wrong_ student were to see me—"

And then Severus was lying a piece of parchment onto the table with unnecessary force. Remus felt the blood drain from his face at the sight of it. "Here, wolf. A safety precaution."

"I don't—" Remus spluttered, feeling as though he'd stepped into some bizzare dream. "Severus, I—where did you—"

"Recognize it, Lupin?" Severus said silkily, a nasty grin playing about his lips. He'd lost the awkward posture and had drawn up in his seat, somehow towering over Remus even though there were a good few centimeters difference between them. "Yes, I know _all_ about this map, and I've been given exact knowledge on how to use it."

"Harry _gave you_—"

"Of course not," Severus snorted, waving him away like he was nothing but a fly, "but fear not, Lupin, I will return it to him in due time."

"You _stole_—" Words failed him now, and Remus had to fight the immediate fury rising in him at the thought of Severus goddamn _Snape_ stealing _his_ map from Harry. _James would have been proud of me,_ he thought distantly, taking a deep breath. He made himself take two more before he felt steady enough to speak. "That is _very_ wrong of you, Severus. That map is Harry's property. And for you to blatantly _steal_ from him…"

"Don't blather at me like I'm one of your wayward Gryffindors," Severus sneered, smoothing the map out. He muttered the incantation under his breath, and in the words were such derision, Remus felt a physical pang in his chest at the sound of them. "See here. _That woman _is tucked neatly in her bed, and there is nary a student in sight. Certainly none who would brave the dungeons at night."

"Albus is awake," Remus said. His voice was almost too soft to be heard.

"Inter-House relationship building," Severus said without skipping a beat.

_I don't know that Albus would be quite willing to accept me stuffing my cock up your arse as a positive war effort. _Remus held back the thought with sheer force of will, but the glint in Severus's eye told him his expression said more than enough already. "This is a bad idea," he said instead. _And you have had far too much coffee today._

"Yes." And for all that he'd seemed intent on bringing Remus back to the castle with him, Severus looked grimly satisfied. "Which is why you will be returning to headquarters, to your drunken mutt, and spending the night dwelling on all that's been said."

"I—" For the second time in a matter of minutes, Remus found himself at a loss for words. He glanced quickly at Rosmerta and leaned forward to grind out, "Was that all on _purpose?_"

"Had you expected otherwise?" Severus's voice was cold and his eyes were locked on something far off.

"You—you bloody pompous…Salazar and _Mary, _it was all to show me that _map!_"

"Obviously." Getting to his feet, Severus took said map and tucked it away into his robes. He dropped a handful of Galleons onto the table as he turned to leave. "Go home, Lupin. Black is undoubtedly waiting to hear you give vent to your vexations. Do be sure to give him my regards, and let him know his _heirlooms_ are now marked quite thoroughly by Snivellus fucking Snape."

And then he was gone.

Remus stared at their empty bowls until his vision blurred. He would have sat there until the sun shone if Rosmerta hadn't called from across the pub, "Are you going to sit there all night, then?" and he, too, stood to leave.

_What a disaster, _was all Remus allowed himself to think before he Disapparated, leaving Hogsmeade and the night's events far behind.

—

Lupin didn't contact him the next day, and Severus absolutely did not allow himself to feel sorry for it. What had been done was entirely necessary. Lupin was a fool no more capable of seeing past his membership to the self-dubbed _Marauders_ than Black himself was; and if his apology had been oddly soothing to hear, well—no one would ever have to know. Least of all the werewolf himself.

And besides, Severus had something far more important to worry about than Remus Lupin: a very different werewolf problem that went by the name Fenrir Greyback.

The summons had come at a surprise, and the fact that bringing goddamn fucking Greyback was a thought that had crossed somebody's mind was even more so. The beast stalked the corridors of Lucius's home with a wordless, hungry grin, and with every pass by, Severus could almost tangibly feel the threads of the Occlumency holding his emotions in check fraying. It was a good thing he hadn't eaten since the soup at the Three Broomsticks, because he was quite certain that if Greyback tried to touch him in any way, he would vomit. As it was, his stomach felt like a great sea churning and whirling about. His throat burned with bile.

Perhaps it was on purpose. Perhaps, after seeing just how many of his nightmares featured slavering wolves in dark tunnels, the Dark Lord had placed Greyback here just to see if his loyal spy would crack under the pressure.

Severus Occluded all the harder at the thought of it.

He suffered through Lucius's tripe, allowed Crabbe and Goyle to stumble through their words until they came up for air with something resembling a proper train of thought, and spoke to Narcissa in a side-chamber off the main hall. The night was slowly winding down to an end with no meetings in sight—though the way members of the crowd were disappearing one after the other was telling—and Severus was on edge. When Macnair arrived at the corner he'd secluded himself in, he knew it was his turn.

"He wants you and Rowle next," Macnair said, showing his blackened teeth as he grinned. Severus felt the urge to run his tongue over his own crooked teeth in a sudden upsurge of self-consciousness. "Best hurry, Snape. He doesn't want kept waiting."

"Where?" he asked, keeping his voice cool and unconcerned. He Vanished the last of his champagne as he pretended to drain it, setting the empty flute on an end table that looked really to collapse under its own weight.

"Upstairs, you—"

"_Rowle, _you fucking idiot," Severus interrupted with a sigh. "Where is he?"

Macnair's smile looked more like a grimace now. "In the dungeon."

_Entertaining himself, of course. _"And no doubt you feel no need to fetch him yourself," he said.

"Best hurry," Macnair said again as Severus left him without a backwards glance.

The dungeon stairs were slippery with age and algae, and by the light of a Lumos and a vice-like grip on the damp wall he guided himself into the darkness, blinking hard to adjust his vision. Thorfinn Rowle could regularly be found beneath the manor during a summons; he was the one who often secured Muggles to torture, ones he'd spent days or even weeks watching and learning—people he knew wouldn't be missed. If the man had been Muggle himself, there was no doubt he'd have been as renown as the Zodiac Killer or Ted Bundy. There was no limit to the crimes Rowle was willing to commit. Severus would know: he'd been there to witness much of them during the first war.

Past the rust-clogged gate and into the bubble of a noise-dampening spell came the sound of dripping water and somebody crying. Allowing himself only a second to steel himself, Severus entered the chamber beyond and stopped just short of Rowle's playtoy of the night: a Muggle woman whisked away from God knew where, with unlined skin and hair streaked silver. Whether she'd gone prematurely grey was due to genetics or the stress of torture, Severus couldn't say. And he didn't want to know the answer. Forcing himself to stare impassively at the way she twisted and screamed at the sight of a newcomer, he said, "The Dark Lord requests our presence."

"I'm gathering information," Rowle said with a twisted smile. "Tell him—"

"_Now, _Rowle. A request from the Dark Lord is an order, not a polite inquiry. He's waiting."

"_Crucio,_" Rowle rasped, deaf to the world beyond his own pleasure and the renewed cries of his victim. "Filthy Mudblood. _Crucio!_"

Severus raised a hand briefly to his face, massaging his eyes like he could rub away the images burned into his retinas. "This is rapidly becoming tedious," he said, stepping forward to view the proceedings more clearly, even though the sight of the woman writhing on the ground made his insides seize past the grey fog of his Occlumency shields. "The Dark Lord is _waiting, _Rowle. Put the Muggle out of its misery and hurry on, lest you test our Lord's patience and cause trouble for us all. I won't take the blame for your being late. You're done here."

His first mistake, Severus reflected later, had been to raise his wand. His second was to look away—because in the instant that he turned to face the Muggle, Rowle struck.

It was the blood that surprised him first. The pain didn't come until after.

For a moment, as he pressed his palm to the gash in his robes, all Severus could register was cold fury. Then he was falling, collapsing to his hands and knees before Rowle as a metallic flood swelled in his throat and over his lips. The rushing in his ears drowned out all but the woman's sobs and his own gagging breaths. Severus pushed his shaking fingers into the hole in his stomach, and then forced himself to look up from the filth tucked into the cracks in the floor and into the face of the man who'd torn him open.

"You," he choked out, spitting blood, "you—"

Rowle was a mere outline in the dark, but the glee in his eyes was so clear Severus would have seen it a league away, even past the tears crowding at the edges of his vision, spilling down his cheeks unbidden. Rowle's fingers were wrapped loosely, readily, round his wand; and without either of them having to say a word, Severus knew he would strike again if he gave him reason to.

A poisonous, burning rage seared through him as brightly as the splinter of agony opening in his belly. Spitting curses as best he could, he tried in vain to get his feet beneath him. Rowle scoffed at the sight and finally headed for the stairs.

That was his first mistake. His second was to assume he had qualms about fighting dirty. Because once he'd turned away, Severus picked up his wand. And he did not hesitate to cast.

"_Septumsempra!_"


	4. Chapter 4

He'd refrained from killing him, because his personal revenge wasn't worth the Dark Lord's wrath, but it had been a near thing.

Once Severus slashed him behind the knees and ankles, Rowle went down easy. Incapacitating him had been another story entirely; but he'd managed it through sheer will and hatred, and set to work in leaving the man moaning on the floor next to an empty set of shackles, with false memories and the stench of whiskey.

Though he knew he was injured and on a time limit, Severus had taken the minutes required to methodically remove Rowle's toes one by one, until the woman's screams had settled into horrified sobs and Rowle was the one shrieking instead. And then Severus had reattached them—badly, of course, so that in the passing weeks they would putrefy and rot from their stumps, so full of infection that perhaps not even the legs could be saved in the end. Modifying Rowle's memories from there had been simple work; and rescuing the Muggle had been easier still, once he got his legs beneath him and unshackled her wrists. All the Dark Lord knew, and would ever know, was that he had found Rowle in a dangerous state of inebriation, that he'd lashed out when Severus dared to separate him from the Muggle—and that shortly after, the woman had turned up missing, with false memories of releasing her embedded in Rowle's mind.

Settling on simple mutilation had been a test of self-control Severus hadn't been sure he'd pass; but in the end it had been the thought of the Dark Lord that brought him back to his senses. He may have been the spy, in close quarters and familiarity to Albus Dumbledore, but not even Severus's station in the ranks would have saved him had he picked off a formidable part of the army the Dark Lord was actively trying to build.

So he swallowed his pride and three Blood Replenishers, and went back to the castle after making his report.

Apparating took enough out of him that Severus had to rest against the side of the Three Broomsticks for a time, pressing the palm of his hand hard against the wrappings wound about his abdomen in an attempt to staunch the bleeding long enough for him to return to his rooms. His legs were shaking almost too badly to support him as he made the slow trek up the lawn of the castle, breathing hard and blinking away reflexive tears. He fumbled his way past the doors and into the entrance hall before slipping down the stairwell to the dungeons and preparing himself for a long journey. Less than five minutes from his chambers, his balance gave out on stones so old they'd gone smooth with the centuries, and he dropped in a heap to the floor.

The gash in his stomach opened with the movement. Fumbling for something, anything, to stop the dampness spreading over his robes, he came up with a half-empty Blood Replenisher and downed it in one go. His fingers tingled as they regained circulation. He could feel color return to his cheeks.

_You idiot, _he told himself, resting his face in his quaking hands. _You absolute fucking idiot._

He should have known better than to draw his wand without warning. He did know better. And yet here he was, gutted open like a pig, bleeding out on a Hogwarts staircase in the middle of the night.

He almost called for Albus. Severus went so far as to utter the first syllables of the Patronus charm when he lowered his wand again and groaned into his hand. He felt like he'd—swallowed fire, or, or bleach…

Albus couldn't see him like this. Severus would not allow it.

And so he picked himself back up, swaying as the vertigo hit him, and went to his rooms to nurse his wounds in solitude.

He had a busy night ahead.

—

In the fourteen years he'd been at Hogwarts, Severus had never once missed a day of work. But when he woke up the next morning, it was all he could do to convince himself not to break that record.

"Ugh," was his first word of the day, followed shortly after by a grating, "Shit."

His stomach ached fiercely and there was blood caught under his nails, streaked across his hands and arms, and probably his face. And without even having to look, he could tell by the tacky stiffness of his shirt that the rest of him was caked in it. His bedsheets were ruined.

_Well, _he thought, covering his eyes with his sticky palms, _I'm not dead._

The dittany he'd applied—or, rather, dumped—had done its work well enough, but the skin on his stomach was raw, and in the spots where the gash had gone deep, he could feel that scabs had taken over like an ugly patchwork quilt cross-stitched across his abdomen. He could feel them cracking and oozing as he forced himself upright. Clutching his side in an admittedly inane attempt to leave the wound intact, Severus inhaled sharply and regretted it when a bolt of pain shot through his abdomen. He laid back down and bit through the flesh of his thumb to keep from screaming.

It took far longer than he liked for him to get out of bed, and even longer to convince his legs they had to move. He washed and dressed the wound so slowly he knew he was only prolonging the pain, but couldn't convince his quaking hands to move any faster as he applied more antiseptic before swallowing another Blood Replenisher and a Pepper-up for good measure. Then, ears steaming and jaw clenched tight enough to make his teeth ache, he went to the adjoining bathroom to see if he couldn't clear the mucus from his throat before his first lesson of the day. It was his reflection, however, that stopped him in his tracks.

His eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, and the shadows beneath them looked as though they'd been carved into his face. There was a grey pallor to his face that wouldn't have looked out of place on a dying man.

_Glamor charm, _he thought, stunned by the sight of himself. _It's fine. You're fine. No one will know but Albus._

He covered up the worst of it. Not so much that he would seem unusually well-rested or happy by any form of the word, but enough to not look terminally ill. Then he dressed, steadied himself, and left.

Blood had already soaked through the jumper he'd thrown on, and his robes were sticking to him by the time he entered the Great Hall for breakfast. Casting a silent _Tergeo_ on the mess, he downed his coffee with shaking hands to rid himself of the lingering taste of copper, scalding his tongue even as chills shivered up his spine in a way that left him wondering if he hadn't taken fever. And though he'd spent the better part of ten minutes spitting wads of bloody mucus into his sink before emerging from the dungeons, he could feel it rising still, catching in his throat.

From her place next to Albus, Minerva eyed him critically, but didn't speak; he saw her glance at Umbridge next to him, tearing into her kippers with a vicious sort of glee, and knew she would try to corner him later. Albus, in contrast, appeared serene as always—but Severus knew he was watching.

"Problem, Minerva?" Severus said in an undertone, speaking out the side of his mouth. Without meaning to, he began to scan the Gryffindor table for a shock of untidy black hair. But perhaps it was too early still…

"You're looking rather poorly today, Severus," Minerva said flatly. She was not looking at him.

"Are you implying I don't always?"

"Severus, my boy," Albus said calmly, cutting them both off, "I had meant to discuss syllabus changes with you yesterday, but I'm aware you had a detention to oversee. Would you be so kind as to come see me tonight to go over your lesson plans?"

Severus had not changed his syllabus in fourteen years, not since he'd drawn it up in a panic the night before his very first lesson. But Dolores Umbridge didn't know that. "Of course, Headmaster," he said smoothly, and started to eat just so that Albus wouldn't bother him again.

Potter made his royal appearance near the end of breakfast, and by the sudden stillness of the vile bitch next to him, Severus knew he wasn't the only one who had noticed his presence. The boy was rumpled and quiet; his face, even from where Severus was sitting, looked entirely too pale, and there was a stiff tenseness to his shoulders that wouldn't have looked out of place on a statue. He looked ill. And that made Severus feel ill, too.

When had he started to care about the boy's health? Harry had always been at the forefront of his mind, of course, but he had forced himself to remain content with the boy's continued existence. There had never been any need to wonder if he was well, or happy, or eating his vegetables. And now…and now.

Perhaps Severus's toast had gone off. It would explain the sudden indigestion better than any sudden appearance of empathy would.

The rest of the morning marched on without fanfare. The first years spent their hour blundering over themselves in their first attempt at brewing a Forgetfulness Potion, making such a bad effort that by the time second period rolled round, Severus's mood had already soured beyond hope of repair. It only worsened when he saw the sullen look on the boy's face.

_Fuck, _Severus thought, with feeling, at the glare the boy sent his way.

This day was utter shite.

—

"You will receive your essays tomorrow," Snape said as he swept through the aisles, fixing them all with a steely look, and sometimes a smirk for the Slytherins. Harry glowered at him, already knowing what his essay would say. He was _eagerly_ anticipating the big, fat D he'd be getting. "It is already very clear to me that _some_ of you have not yet bothered to crack open a book this term, and may find themselves…_surprised_…"

A week ago, Harry would have said with confidence that he hoped to scrape at least an Acceptable, but he'd had to scramble to write his essay two nights before, staying up far into the early morning in his rush to finish. It was that Umbridge woman's fault. If she hadn't kept him so _late_…

He had only the slightest comfort in that Snape looked about as terrible as Harry felt today—which was a feat, considering Snape almost always looked terrible.

His eyes were oddly glassy and there was a sheen to his skin that made Harry feel feverish at just the sight of it. His hair was more lank than ever and even from a distance, his hands were shaking quite visibly. Overall, Snape seemed to be fighting a bad bout of flu, and losing.

All of this combined made Snape more surly than ever. And by the end of their lesson, Gryffindor was down fifteen points, Seamus of all people had received a detention, and Harry's temper was steadily rising with the throbbing sting of his hand.

The detentions with Umbridge more than taking a toll on him. He had a mountain of homework that he had barely had a chance to even start on, there was a near-constant headache pounding behind his right eye, and now _this?_

Harry didn't need this. Harry did not need this at all.

"Stay behind, Potter," Snape said as the bell chimed and the rest of the class rushed to escape the dungeons. "We need to discuss the possibility of remedial lessons."

Harry didn't have to pretend to feel apprehensive as the room emptied out and the snickers from the Slytherins faded away. Ron and Hermione lingered a few moments longer until Snape sent them a withering look and they, too, stepped out into the corridor, shutting the door behind them.

"You don't have to say anything," Harry said angrily as the latch clicked into place, glaring at the floor. "I know my essay was rubbish."

"That's not what this is about," Snape said, though his voice was flat and he looked quite unimpressed, "but I have looked it over. Over the holiday, you seemed to have grasped the subject. What happened?"

Harry flexed his right hand and shook his head. "Detention with Umbridge. It went late and I didn't get to start until after midnight."

"And Sunday evening?"

"Same thing. Detention." He was sure, tonight, it would be much of the same, as well as all throughout the week. A week that was shaping up to be the worst he'd ever suffered at Hogwarts.

"What has she got you doing, if you're returning so late?" Snape asked, sitting slowly on the edge of his desk. There was an odd tightness to his eyes that made him look angry, but his scowl didn't hold any fire and his arms were loose at his sides. Harry studied him until he _did_ begin to look angry, and then looked at the floor again.

"Nothing. You know—lines," he lied, though he wasn't sure why. Snape, of all people, would vouch for him on this, wouldn't he? Snape would take his side.

(And when, exactly, had he begun to think of Professor _Snape_ as someone he could turn to when in need of help? When had his greasy git of a Potions professor started seeming like somebody trustworthy? On his side and in his corner?)

"Spare me your lies," Snape said. "I know your tells now, Potter."

_Damn_. He did, didn't he?

"I…" He froze for a moment, deliberating, before he said in a rush, "I don't want to tell you."

Snape's focus snapped onto him like a falcon who'd spotted a rabbit in a field. "Why?"

Harry swallowed hard. "You'll be angry."

"I'm _always_ angry."

"Angrier than usual, then," he conceded, easing back into the chair he'd abandoned. "Could you just…let me handle it? Just for a bit, until the detentions are over and I can go back to keeping my head down."

Snorting, Snape dropped back to the floor—was that a wince?—and swept his way over to Harry, who tried to cover the back of his hand as casually as possible. "You," Snape said as he loomed over him, "are no more capable of _keeping your head down _than Albus Dumbledore is of wearing something without sequins."

"Well don't give up hope yet," Harry said, "because he wasn't wearing sequins today."

Harry had never seen Snape laugh before—hadn't known him capable of it—but the choking noise that erupted from his professor's throat was very telling, even after Snape covered it with a cough. Harry hid a grudging smile with his hand.

"What is that?" Snape said then, and Harry's heart dropped like a stone into the pit of his stomach.

"It's nothing," he began, but Snape had already grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him forward, so that the back of his hand—his _hand, _dammit!—shone in the light. "Ow, you're hurting me, Professor—"

"What," Snape said again, so quietly Harry had to strain to hear him, "is _this?_"

"It's going to be a dislocated shoulder if you don't _let go, _Snape," he snapped back, wrenching his arm back and cradling it protectively against his chest.

For a long stretch of time, they only glared at each other. Then, spitting out a tightly controlled, "Who?" Snape started for his desk, drawing a piece of parchment and a quill. "And when?"

Harry tucked his hand beneath the table to keep it out of view and shook his head. "You know who. Can't you just let it be? I'm handling it."

"Oh, yes, I can see that," Snape said dryly, dipping the tip of his quill into a bottle of ink. "_Who_?"

"Umbridge," he sighed at last.

"When?" Snape was scribbling furiously, bent low over his desk.

"Last night, and the night before that. It is lines, but it's—"

"Somehow appearing on your _body, _Potter, instead of a bit of parchment." He bent further over the desk, and then stopped, pressing one hand hard against his stomach. To Harry's horror, it came away red. Snape didn't even seem to notice; and if he had, it was clear he didn't care. Fixing him with a warning look, Snape muttered, "What did the quill look like?"

"I—sorry?" he stammered, still staring at the blood he now saw clearly, soaking through Snape's robes. How long had that been there? How had he not noticed? Had _anyone_ noticed?

"The _quill. _The one she gave you. What did it look like?"

The quill…right. The quill. "Long and thin. The tip was odd, it was sharper than a normal one."

"Color?"

"Black."

"A blood quill, then," Snape said quietly, writing faster than he had before. A moment later, he laid down his quill and glanced at Harry. "I will be taking this to the Headmaster."

"No, you _can't," _he burst out, leaping to his feet. Snape _couldn't_ tell Dumbledore. "It's only going to make it worse!"

"I am obligated to report any—"

Shaking his head, Harry said, "No, you _can't. _It only means she's won! Don't you see? If I tell Dumbledore—I'd lose."

Snape was staring at him like he'd grown an extra limb and used it to beat him round the head. "You cannot fucking be serious, Potter—"

"It'll mean she's beat me!"

"Yes," Snape said, in a tone so derisive it sounded nearly hysterical, "well, if I let her go on any longer, she may in fact attempt to do just that."

The bell rang then, and they both stopped in their tracks, staring at the ceiling. "Oh," Harry said. "It's time for lunch."

"Go," Snape said, waving a dismissive, bloody hand his way and rubbing his eyes. "We'll discuss this later."

_Later. _Though he was now deeply dreading the contents of the conversations they'd be having, Harry couldn't quite stop the thrill of knowing Snape really was speaking to him again, even if it was in secret. "Right," he said, and then stopped before turning towards the door.

There came an odd, swooping sensation in Harry's stomach as he realized that somehow, in the span of the last year, he had grown so much he and Snape were now almost eye-level.

Had Snape always been this small? Here was the man who had towered over him as a child; the one who had been the centerpiece of almost every revenge fantasy barring Malfoy, and the one who had tormented him weekly. He was the one who had always loomed over Harry like a giant—and now they were the same height, separated only by a few centimeters.

How tall had Harry's father been, in the end? In the Pensieve, they had been close, but James Potter had surely continued growing during his last years at Hogwarts. How tall had he been? And would Harry one day surpass him? Just as he would in age, growing ever older even as his father remained young forever?

"What?" Snape said at last, looking vaguely bewildered.

"Nothing, sir," Harry said, and left, shutting the door behind him.

o

o

o

whoops I forgot ffnet existed my bad


	5. Chapter 5

Harry did not go to lunch, nor did he meet up with Ron and Hermione. In fact, he didn't go near the Great Hall at all.

Instead, Harry went to McGonagall.

He spent the duration of the hour outside of her office, alternating between leaning against the wall and pacing the length of the corridor in an attempt to relieve some of the agitated nerves jittering through him. The walk there had gone by in a tizzy of what if's and imagined consequences, and the wait itself was proving to be no better. His thoughts churned about his head and his stomach felt worse. By the time the bell chimed for afternoon lessons, he found his conviction slipping; he could no longer be certain what he was going to say, exactly, when McGonagall came back from lunch. What if she didn't have a lesson gap this hour? What would he even say if she did? Should he mention he and Snape had spent the summer together? Would she question his sudden care if he didn't, and she'd been left in the dark about that arrangement? Was he allowed to tell her if she didn't know already, or could there be possible repercussions for Snape—or Dumbledore—over keeping a student at their personal residence with minimal supervision for either of them? Would she even believe him if he did tell her? About the summer? About Snape's wound? About _anything? _Or would she blow him off like she had in his first year when confronted about the Philosopher's Stone? As good of a professor as she was during lessons, Harry had never known McGonagall to help him out with his more…unusual…situations. And this was certainly unusual.

And even if she did care about what he had to say, would she care about Snape himself? Harry had seen the man's memories—and he'd heard about the werewolf prank firsthand from Professor Lupin and Sirius back in his third year. There had been no mention of professors in either. Why hadn't there been? Had Snape's classmates loathed him so much they wouldn't run for help? Had they all somehow approved? Or was it the same as it had been with Dudley and his gang, where everyone knew they would only be making matters worse-or, perhaps, even turning Dudley's ire on themselves-if they spoke up? But why had no one done _anything_ besides his mum? _And even she hadn't done much,_ he thought bitterly, and regretted it immediately. This wasn't his mother's fault and he wasn't going to accomplish anything by being angry with someone who had been dead for fourteen years, even if he _was_ angry, in a way. He was _always_ angry lately.

This was a bad idea, wasn't it? Was it a bad idea? Did he even really care if it was? After all, Snape was perfectly content to give away _his_ secrets. Harry was only giving him a taste of his own medicine. And it wasn't as if he was telling McGonagall about his mum and Snape—he was just making sure the prat didn't kick off in his sleep tonight. Right? Right.

He'd talk to McGonagall. He'd talk to McGonagall, and she'd sort everything out. He'd talk—

"Mr. Potter?" Professor McGonagall asked, interrupting his train of thought.

_Or I'll just leave now, _Harry thought as he turned on one heel. "Er—Professor," he said with false cheer, frozen in place with one leg in the air. Spinning back to face her, he mustered up a smile, trying to look as though her sudden appearance was no more than a pleasant surprise. "Hi, sorry, I was hoping to maybe speak with you."

To her credit, she didn't question his sudden appearance in her office doorway; she ushered him in and closed the door firmly behind them, lowering herself into the chair behind her desk. She wasted no time in setting him up with her tin of ginger biscuits and a cup of tea. But it wasn't until he'd devoured the first of his biscuits and knocked back half his tea that she fixed him with a steely look and asked, "How many this time?"

Harry swallowed too soon and choked out a, "Sorry?"

"How many detentions, Potter?" she asked, leaning back in her seat.

He swigged the last dregs of his tea to clear his airway. "Actually, Professor," he said when he could speak again, and then stopped.

_Was_ this the right decision? Harry took as much time as he dared as he tried to make sense of the whirlwind of thoughts in his brain, and stared out the window overlooking the grounds where he'd had his first flying lesson in an effort to avoid McGonagall's gaze. Snape was injured. That was clear. How injured? How much did a wound on someone's stomach bleed? What if Snape wasn't really hurt after all, and how angry would he be if Harry went around and told people his personal business? After all, he hadn't seen the wound. It could have been something small.

But what if it wasn't? What if Snape really did need help?

"Mr. Potter, is this a serious matter I should be made aware of immediately?" Professor McGonagall asked.

"No," he said on instinct, and then stopped again. He brushed crumbs off the front of his robes and reached for another biscuit, scraping deep grooves into the top with his thumbnail. "No. I mean—yes. It is, Professor. I'm not here about Umbridge, I'm here about Professor Snape."

McGonagall's expression didn't change, but there was suddenly a weary air to her, like she was preparing herself for an argument she'd had many times previous. "Go on, then, Mr. Potter," she said calmly, pushing the biscuit tin closer to him.

"It's not what you're thinking," he protested through the bite he'd taken, trying to stop it from crumbling in his hand. "I wanted to ask if…if maybe Professor Dumbledore had seen him recently."

When McGonagall didn't speak, Harry let himself take another moment to gather his thoughts. McGonagall would care, wouldn't she? About a fellow faculty member, even if it was Snape? She would make sure Dumbledore was told, or Madam Pomfrey, right?

"Have you, er, _noticed _anything about him today?" Harry tried, lowering his head over the remains of his biscuit to avoid eye contact.

He could hear McGonagall shifting in her chair. "Like what, Mr. Potter?"

"Anything…odd?" Harry said. "Like, well, maybe…er…_blood?_"

"Blood?" she repeated, eyebrows shooting up. And the dam burst.

"He made me stay behind today and there was blood all down the front of his robes," Harry said in a rush, clenching the last of his biscuit in his fist. "It was _everywhere. _I don't think he knows I saw."

"Mr. Potter," said McGonagall, voice flat, "are you _quite certain_—"

"_Yes_," he said. "It was on his hand, too, when he touched his stomach."

"His stomach? Is that where the wound was?"

"I dunno," he said helplessly, "maybe. I didn't actually _see_ it, Professor, but he seemed like he was in pain all during our lesson. And the blood was _everywhere_."

McGonagall stood and looked at him with as much severity as always, but the gentleness with which she took him by the arm soothed his nerves. "Fifteen points to Gryffindor for bringing this matter to me. Go to class, Potter. The Headmaster and I will take it from here."

Out in the corridor, Harry turned back to her and asked, "Is he going to be all right? Snape?"

"_Professor_ Snape," she said before whisking off down the corridor, "is far too stubborn to die, Mr. Potter."

The relief that rushed through him was immense, but as she disappeared from sight and the moment passed, Harry looked down to find the last of his biscuit, crushed to dust in the spaces between his fingers.

—

"Where have you been?" Ron asked as Harry clambered through the Fat Lady's portrait and into the Common Room. "Hermione's gone spare, thought you got yourself locked up in the dungeons."

"Where is Hermione?" Harry asked instead of answering. It was unlike Ron to be sitting alone at any time of the day; even he and Harry had not been speaking last year, he had always been seen with Dean and Seamus.

"Arithmancy." Ron shifted to make space for him on the sofa, and Harry settled in. Nudging his arm, Ron pushed a small bundle of napkins his way. "Here. I didn't see you at lunch."

"Oh." Harry unwrapped the bundle to find an odd assortment of foods, from roasted chicken to small red potatoes to a slice of treacle tart, and realized quite suddenly that he was ravenous. "Thanks. I hadn't thought to…"

"I know, mate," Ron snorted. He had his Divinations book open on his lap but didn't seem to be in a hurry to look it over; in fact, Harry was surprised he'd even deigned to make it appear as though he'd be using their free period to study. Normally, they saved their Divinations work until the last moment—or until Hermione threatened them into doing it. "I grabbed some of your favorites. Didn't think you'd have gone to the kitchens."

"Thanks," Harry said, and bit off a chunk of chicken.

"So," Ron said, leaning back into the cushions, "_where_ did you say you were, again?"

"I was with McGonagall," Harry said in an undertone. "I wanted to talk to her about Snape."

"Snape? What about him?"

"Did you notice anything, er, _funny_ about him today? Anything odd?" Harry asked.

"Besides the fact that he seems to have washed his hair this week?" Ron said. "Nah, not really. Why?"

Harry put his chicken leg down and muttered, "He was covered in blood all throughout the lesson today. I think it was coming from his stomach, because when he kept me behind, he touched his robes and his hand was soaked in it. He didn't even seem worried, really. It was…odd."

Ron closed his Divinations book and announced a bit too loudly, "Creepy bastard."

"Shh," Harry hissed when a group of second years looked around at them, "keep your voice down."

"What, d'you think they're going to know who I'm talking about just because I called the prat creepy?" Ron demanded, and then held his hands up. "All right, sorry. I know he's a touchy subject now. Sorry. So, McGonagall?"

"I told her what I saw," he went on, still eyeing the second years. Harry took another bite of chicken and said through a mouthful of food, "Thought it fitting, you know, get back at him a little."

Setting his Divinations book aside entirely now, Ron said, "What d'you mean, get back at him? For what?"

Had Mr. Weasley not told him? Had he not let Ron know what Harry had told him? "Er," Harry said eloquently. "Well, nothing. Never mind. It was just…the Dursleys, I s'pose."

"The Dursleys?" Ron looked entirely baffled. "What about them?"

"Well, your dad talked to me while I was at Snape's, and he…well…I s'pose they don't want me going back there anymore," he said, feeling more guarded than he'd expected. "You know, him and Remus…and Snape."

Ron shook his head. "Wait. No, start from the beginning."

"It's a long story, Ron."

"I don't care. You're my best mate. You can tell me anything, Harry, you know that."

So Harry did. He told Ron everything.

—

Severus was no stranger to Albus's office; in fact, one could argue the point further in that after spending a solid amount of his childhood in this room for one reason or another, and later a large chunk of his adult life, that the only one more intimately familiar with it was its owner himself. Severus knew the chairs—which one's fabric felt best on your fingertips, the faintly sticky spot in the back corner of another, and the one so soft it felt like it was giving you a suffocating sort of hug. He knew the rug and the exact spot over which students had a tendency to trip. The trinkets and delicate instruments had been scrutinized front to back on multiple occasions. Even the scent of the room was a familiar one, of old books and sweetened tea, and sometimes of ash on Fawkes's Burning Day.

Today, his head was spinning so badly the entire room seemed like foreign water. He'd stumbled over the rug as he walked in. The fabric of his favorite chair felt like an assault on his skin when he dared touch it. The room smelled cloyingly sweet, and the stench of it soured his stomach and made him feel woozy. The light glittering off the knick knacks was blinding.

The day had passed in a whirl he could only barely begin to make sense of; he'd changed his robes twice, because _Scourgify_ only went so far, and he'd downed enough water to drown a small child. The day's lessons were a blur in his mind, he was out of bandages, and now his potions stocks were beginning to run low. He would need to work overtime to replenish them over the next week. The time would go, of course, unpaid—because he would not be bringing this matter to Albus, no matter what happened.

"When I arrived at Lucius's house," he said, tearing a slice of toast to shreds that grew ever smaller, "the Dark Lord was not yet bringing us in. The summons was nearing its end by the time he got around to it. He does it purposely," Severus added.

"Of course." Albus was sitting behind his desk, watching the fire crackling in the hearth. "Of that I have no doubt."

He'd been oddly distant since Severus had come in, setting off a sort of wrongness that wouldn't stop rankling him, no matter what he said or did. Had he been particularly awful during one of his lessons today, and Albus was angry with him? Was he to expect a lecture? Or had something happened in the last twenty-four hours-something to do with the Order, perhaps?

"Dolohov was first," Severus continued, wringing his shreds of toast between his fingers. "And Yaxley. I believe the Dark Lord is appointing Yaxley to find out who guards the Department of Mysteries. Learn their names and faces. Find leverage, or blackmail. He has not stated this outright, but I can think of no other reason for Yaxley's periodic disappearances. Bellatrix Lestrange has already been taken to task on finding Black, and seeing as how the Dark Lord is intending on staying, as you might put it, on the down-low…"

Dumbledore didn't move his head, but Severus could feel eyes on him. He stood, which was a mistake, and had to lean on the desk to hide the way his legs had suddenly gone loose on him. It was long past the time for him to take another Blood Replenishing Potion. "How long did Tom keep them there?"

"Not long. Gibbon, Nott, Travers, and Jugson were with him the longest, and Macnair the shortest. I believe he is being sent to the giants to divert Hagrid's efforts and recruit them for the Dark Lord's own cause. The others are to be used for a different sort of mission. I have reason to believe-" The room spun quite suddenly, and he had to tighten his grip on Albus's desk to keep from toppling backwards. "I…I have reason to believe-"

"Are you quite well," the Headmaster asked, eyeing him sharply, "Severus?"

"Fine," he ground out.

Throughout the day, the wound had stubbornly refused to close for longer than an hour, though he'd applied enough Dittany to give himself something resembling psoriasis (which only served to make matters worse). By the time night had fallen and he'd prepared himself to meet with Albus to review yesterday's summons, Severus had been forced to conclude that Rowle had, in fact, cursed him.

He'd contemplated using the countercurse to Septumsempra on the injury, but the thought…the very _thought_ of Rowle using that spell, _his _spell, against him, its creator…He'd been too prideful to even attempt it. What a fucking _idiot_ he was…what a fucking idiot he _always_ was…

"I have reason to believe Gibbon and the others have been tasked with retrieving the prophecy when the time comes," Severus continued after a fortifying breath. "Lucius will be joining them, though whether that is what the Dark Lord wants remains to be seen. Lucius will be inserting himself in any mission he can to bring himself back into his Lord's good graces. The willing occupation of his house is testament to that. He is now pushing for Draco to join the ranks. Narcissa has told me in confidence that it may happen as early as next summer."

"And Draco himself? What does he think on the matter?" Albus asked.

"I don't know," Severus said quietly. "He no longer speaks to me as freely as he once did."

"He is growing older, Severus," Albus said, just as quietly, and turned away from the fire. "It happens. Perhaps his newfound distance from you is truly an attempt to distance himself from Tom, miniscule though it may be."

He thought of Narcissa, of the way her knuckles had gone white and her eyes glinted in the lamplight when she'd discussed Draco's extracirruclar lessons, and felt ill.

"_He says," _she'd whispered, as her hands gripped her teacup like a vice and her voice shook, _"that Draco may take the Mark next school year."_

"I am not so sure," Severus said.

The office was silent for a time, as Albus gave him a moment to steady his weakening balance and wrench his fingers back open from where they'd crushed what remained of his toast. Then, just as he was about to dismiss himself from the room, Dumbledore said, "And what of your own meeting with Tom, Severus?"

"I wasn't there for much of the meeting," Severus admitted reluctantly, breathing slowly and evenly in a vain attempt to snap the room back into focus from where it had begun to spin around him. Black flowers bloomed in his vision, blotting out Albus's face and fading his voice into nothingness. Severus bit the inside of his cheek to ground himself and cleared his throat. "Excuse me," he said, and even to his own ears the words sounded strange. "I…didn't catch that, Headmaster."

"Are you certain you're well?" Albus said, as though from the end of a long tunnel.

"Fine, I said," he said roughly. "Dehydrated, perhaps."

And then his legs crumpled beneath him.

_No, _he thought, as a quill and pot of ink clattered to the floor with him. _Up, get up, you fucking prat, up!_

But his body wouldn't respond. And it was too late, because Dumbledore had rounded his desk in an instant, and taken him by the arm. "Severus, he said sharply, digging his fingers into the side of his wrist. _Checking my pulse, _Severus thought, and would have let go of the desk to make it easier if he hadn't known any better. Instead he tightened his grip.

"He…he _cursed_ me, the fucking…_bastard_…" he spit out, and bent his head low so he wouldn't have to see Albus's face. The change of angle made his stomach lurch and his vision white out. It felt as though he'd gone deaf, his ears were ringing so loudly; and his breath was coming so shallowly he could feel his skin buzzing from the lack of oxygen. "_Dammit_."

"Severus," he heard from a long distance away, but his ears were ringing so badly it sounded like a foreign language. He wrapped his arms around his stomach and felt the sleeves of his robes soak through in an instant. "Where are you hurt? Severus."

"Stomach," he said, but the word came out garbled. He could taste blood. _It's fine, _he told himself, _you're fine. You're fine. _"Rowle…at Lucius's. It won't close…Think he…cursed me…_bastard_."

Dumbledore returned at his side, though when he'd left, Severus had no idea. "Poppy is on her way. Open your eyes, Severus. Keep them open."

When had he closed them? When had…

"Stay with me, now."

"That…bastard used…Septumsem…" And then the last of his strength left him, and he was swallowed by an absolute darkness.


	6. Chapter 6

_February, 1968_

"Something needs to be done about this," Mum said in a hushed voice.

Severus had parked himself on the bottom step, hidden by the gloom of the stairwell and the armchair he'd spent weeks strategically inching backward, so that he would be shielded from view during times of necessity. He'd done it slowly. Nothing drastic—a millimeter here, two there, so that by the time he had it where he wanted it, Da might assume it had simply ended up there by coincidence (if he noticed it at all).

"Did you see him yesterday, Tobias? This can't go on."

Da heaved a sigh, loud enough that Severus could hear it through the wall. "What d'you expect me to do?" he asked. "I work all day. I can't very well chase the boy round town."

"The neighbors are beginning to talk. Do you know what they say about us? About Severus?"

"It's all because of your bloody mumbo jumbo. If the boy would act normal, they'd treat him like it." There was a pause, and the clink of silverware. "Where'd they catch him this time?"

"I didn't ask. Severus should know by now that he can't wander freely if he wants to avoid those boys."

It was always the playground, these days, that the neighborhood gang caught him in. Before they'd started coming round, Severus had been able to do as he pleased there-play on the swings, climb up the slide and survey the trees like he was their king. But ever since he met Lily, Tuney had gotten to telling people about him. And because some of the others already knew him from the school on the other side of Cokeworth (a horrid place Da kept him going to), it didn't take long for the boys to learn where he played.

Severus had fought back—he always fought back—but it hadn't helped much. It never did. They'd spent a time knocking him round til they got bored and left him curled under the old slide. And though he'd waited til dark to drag himself back to Spinner's End, Mum had been waiting by the door. She always had a good sense for when he'd gotten into trouble.

She didn't comment on his blackened eyes or bloody nose, or the tear in the shirt he'd taken from her used laundry. She didn't take him in her arms like he'd seen the parents on Lily's telly do, or call up anyone's mum on the rotary in the kitchen. Instead, she pointed him wordlessly to the cold soup on the table and waited until he drank it down before sending him to bed.

"I'm sorry, Mum," he'd managed through a swollen lip. "I didn't mean—"

"To bed," she repeated flatly, and lit a cigarette with a snap of her fingers. And that had been that.

Da's late arrival was announced by the slamming of the door and a gruff, "Where's tea?" which was met with something Severus couldn't make out, but was sure to be acerbic. He'd waited until he heard the scrape of a spoon against a bowl to slip out of bed and out onto the landing, where he slid in holey socks down the stairs to hide and listen. He wasn't disappointed; Mum and Da never bothered to keep their voices down when they talked about him, whether it be good or bad.

Mum was talking again, and he pressed his ear to the wall of the stairwell, where it was thinnest. "Severus will learn to handle these things himself, or he won't. That's up to him."

"He's a child, Eileen."

"He's eight," she shot back, "old enough to care for himself. He'll need to learn self-reliance before he goes to Hogwarts. Pureblood children are _expected_ —"

"Well he's not one of your bloody fucking _Purebloods, _is he?"

Mum hissed something indecipherable, and Severus leaned forward to strain his ears. The step creaked beneath him and his parents fell silent. Severus held his breath, wringing the hem of his shirt between his fingers. After a moment, Da said, "I won't be having that shit in my house, 'Leen."

Something popped, and Severus heard a drink being poured. The first of many, to be sure. "You don't have a choice, Tobias. The boy is a wizard. We've discussed this."

"I won't have a frilly little fairy for a son, prancing round in _dresses. _Not in my ruddy house. You think the neighbors talk now? What about when he goes off to that _school_ of yours?"

He looked down at himself, at his mum's torn blouse and his too-small shorts, and felt shame curl deep in his gut. Dragging a hand through his hair, he tugged his fringe across to shield his face, and then stood and stepped back into shadow to ease himself back up the stairs. But when Mum spoke again, he turned back round to catch her last words.

"It isn't my duty to fix whatever reputation Severus has foolishly gotten himself. He has nothing to do with me when he leaves this house, Tobias, and it is up to him to learn to handle his own matters, without ruining our name in town in the process. The boy will do as he pleases, and if he fails and suffers for it, I shan't be there to correct his mistakes. The boy can take care of his own lot. I have my own problems to worry about. You will put an end to this—tomorrow, or so help me I will have you sprouting a new set of legs and feelers by sundown."

And Da didn't argue back, because before he'd had his drink, he never did.

—

Severus was awake before he opened his eyes.

There was a leaky tap somewhere in the room, _tap tap tapping, _buzzing at the edges of his consciousness. A soft white light shone across his face. His hands lay at his sides, exposed to the cold. The mattress beneath him was as thin as the one he'd spent the summer on, and for a moment he half expected to find himself back at Spinner's End with an old spring digging into his spine and the sound of the pipes shuddering to life with the boy's morning shower. He would smoke a cigarette, cook breakfast, and they'd go to the library in town. It would be a good day.

Then the events of the night came crashing back to him like a tidal wave.

_What have I done? _he thought, mind blank of all else. Then: _Where am I?_

But that answer came to him easily, for there was nowhere else he could have been. Albus had brought him to Poppy, where he would no doubt be hanged, drawn, and quartered for letting himself reach such a state. He would be dangling from the Astronomy Tower by noon.

His entire body felt mummified. Bandages had been wound about his midsection so tightly he could feel his ribs creaking, and the blankets across the bed had been tucked into the sides in a way that left his legs and feet immobile—but at least he was covered, because Severus knew from unfortunate experience that Poppy liked to hide his clothes from him in an attempt to stop him from sneaking out before she'd had her way with him. Only his arms were left free, but with a severely limited range of movement. It was probably on purpose; Poppy always had hated having him for a patient. Severus, at least, was better than James Potter had been. He simply slipped out and made a break for it instead of making the entire castle wait on him hand and foot.

The rest of him simply felt bruised. His knees were throbbing in tandem with his heartbeat and there was a steady, painful pulse in his head, like his brain was too large for his skull. His chest ached, there was snot clogging up one of his nostrils, and he could taste acid in the back of his throat, burning all the way down to his stomach—ironically, the only part of him he _couldn't _feel.

There came the sound of harsh whispering off to his left, at the doorway of what was sure to be one of the private rooms off the side of the main Hospital Wing, and he resisted the urge to open his eyes. Was it Albus? Poppy? Who had brought him here? Had any of the other professors or—god forbid—any students seen him in such a state?

_You're an idiot, _he told himself savagely, curling his hands into fists at his sides. His fingernails bit deep into the dough of his palms. _What were you thinking, you stupid—_

Then someone was shouting. And his own thoughts were no longer enough to drown out the riot happening next to him.

"I told you," they were ranting, to somebody he couldn't yet convince himself to open his eyes to. "I _told_ you this would happen. Did I not come to see you this afternoon? Did I not tell you my concerns?"

"I heard your concerns," the Headmaster said, softly enough that Severus almost couldn't make out the words. He felt himself go very still, and forced himself to sigh and relax, like he'd only shifted in his sleep. "I was well-aware of the matter."

"Then why wasn't anything done on the _matter? _This man is not a piece of meat to be thrown to the wolves, Albus." It was Minerva. Mother_fucker_ — "If Potter hadn't had the good sense to come to me, who knows what might have happened."

_Potter?_

"Quiet now," Poppy snapped from somewhere to his left, "else you'll wake him. He needs _rest, _not a parade blathering about his bedside."

There was a sullen pause, but it didn't last long, because from one instant to the next, there were hands on his shoulders, lifting his back off the mattress. Severus lashed out without thinking. Digging his nails into their wrists, he shoved hard—and then fell back as the motion wrenched a gasp from his lungs. Fire lanced through his stomach, sharp enough to have him curling in on himself and wheezing.

"He's already awake," Minerva said flatly from somewhere off to his left.

"That Dreamless Sleep I gave you," Poppy said severely, though the gentleness with which she forced him out of the ball he'd squeezed himself into more than belied her tone, "was meant to have you sleeping until morning."

Even if he'd been able to speak, Severus would not have told her about the regularity of which he'd abused Dreamless Sleep when he'd first started teaching, enough that normal doses were wasted on him—or of his multiple accidental overdoses during the year after. Or the overdoses that _hadn't_ been entirely accidental.

"Off," he managed to rasp, when his stomach stopped trying to yank itself up his throat. He was let down without argument, because Poppy knew him too well to even try it.

Severus's satisfaction was short-lived, because as soon as he was immobile once more, Minerva loomed over him. "Not _you,_" he groaned.

"You abominably _foolish_ man," she said thunderously, wild-eyed. Her hair was trailing steadily out of the bun atop her head, and there were strands curling round her cheekbones to frame her pale face. Her lips were pursed so tightly together they were almost invisible. "You _dunderhead_. Have you any idea how _severe_ that wound was? You could have _died. _And you might have at least had the dignity to do it somewhere where Potter hadn't been witness to your utter stupidity, you dunce."

It was a shame he was such a surly, antisocial cunt, else he'd be interrogating her now—but he rarely displayed interest in a student, and to do so now would no doubt raise some sort of suspicion. _Potter? _he wondered, swatting Poppy's hand away from his chest and trying not to think about his current state of undress being put on display. _What about the boy?_

But he didn't have to wonder for long, because Minerva was still speaking. "He came to me believing you were set to die at any moment—and seeing you now, I can't say I blame him. What were you thinking?" she demanded, as Poppy, grim-faced, fluttered about his bedside administering potions and tugging at his bandages, and Albus stood silent in the doorway. "_Were_ you thinking?"

_I am going to kill that little pustule, _was what Severus was thinking.

"What time is it?" he asked, ignoring all else.

Minerva scoffed but said, "Just past midnight. You've been out for three hours."

Already dreading the fight ahead, Severus kicked his way free of his blankets and swung one leg out of bed. "Don't," he snarled at Poppy, who was staring at him in abject fury. "Headmaster, there is something urgent I wish to speak to you—"

"Absolutely not!" Poppy snapped, storming towards him with her wand raised. "Into bed, now!"

Dumbledore had seemed content to linger idly in the background, but they all seemed to become keenly aware of his presence as he stepped fully into the room and said, "Let him up, Poppy."

"Headmaster, this man has been gadding about with his innards threatening to—"

"Let him up," Albus repeated quietly.

Poppy threw her hands in the air. "And I suppose I should allow _all_ my patients to do as they please. As baffling as his ability is to remain alive in such a state, Severus Snape is no more privileged in these rooms than any other person—student _or_ staff—during his stay here."

"I'm not inviting anarchy into your damn halls by getting out of bed," Severus said through gritted teeth. "You heard Albus. Sod off."

Without another word, she turned her back and began to roughly rearrange the potions in the cabinet on the far end of the room, near visibly fuming.

Severus elected to ignore her for the time being. Clutching his blankets close to his chest, he swiped a hand at the curtains round his bed, which sprang closed to shield him from view. He finished swinging his legs over the side of the mattress and stood slowly. The first touch of the cold stones against his bare feet was a shock to his system, raising gooseflesh up his arms and legs; the first full step he took to grab for his clothes was even more so. He felt a full-body shudder quake through him, like his limbs were about to fly apart, and for a moment he wasn't sure if his legs would hold. He used the bed to keep his balance as he tugged on his jumper and trousers, forgoing the robes, which were sure to be beyond his shaking fingers right now. His jumper was caked in blood—salvageable, perhaps, if he treated it within the day. It was a good thing he knew multiple methods of removing blood from clothes, because this was the warmest jumper he had on stock, and it often kept him warm beneath his robes during the colder months.

When he was positive he wouldn't look entirely like a fool in front of them all, he pulled the curtains aside and went to Albus. It was slow going, because his feet weren't quite cooperating, and no one seemed to be in a hurry to steady him. Good, he thought, grimly satisfied. When he'd reached the wall, Severus allowed himself a moment to lean against it. The coolness of the stone against his fevered skin was like an ice pack on a bruise, and he relished in the sensation. Blinking away a sudden wave of exhaustion, he bent his head towards Dumbledore and said in an undertone, "Potter cannot attend another detention with Umbridge. I will not allow it."

His entire body was shaking with minute tremors and fever chills were rumbling their way through him, but his voice was clear and as firm as ever. Still in control.

Albus sighed and said, "Severus, you know we must tread carefully—"

"_No,_"Severus snarled, "I won't. Not about this. Do you know what she's making the boy do during his detentions, Headmaster? Has he told you?"

"I find it very touching that you have grown to care for Harry, Severus, but do not allow this to cloud your judgement."

_He isn't listening to me._

Severus knew as well as anyone that they _did_ have to tread carefully now. The Dark Lord was back, and the Ministry was trying to stamp them all down before they could build up the proper resources to stop him. Severus knew Umbridge's presence was a bad omen of worse fates to come. He knew the power she had over them now, all wrapped up neatly with a pink bow and cardigan. That she could do damn near anything in the name of the Ministry, and there would be no consequences to her actions—and that she, most importantly, _knew_ it. But Severus didn't care. Not about this. Never about this.

And because he knew Albus would not punish him so obviously in front of witnesses, Severus took his chance. "A blood quill," he said loudly, and Minerva's head snapped up. Poppy's hands stilled in the middle of polishing a bottle of Skele Gro. "Dolores Umbridge is using a blood quill on students during her detentions."

Albus looked taken aback, but the momentary shock flitted away like it had never been, to be replaced by something hard and stoic. "Where did you come by this information?"

"Potter told me," Severus said, bracing his forearm against the wall to lean more heavily against it. There was no point in hiding his weakness any longer. "After the lesson let out. I saw the words on his hand. I fear the scarring may be permanent at this point. If he had come to me sooner…"

"Do you have evidence of his confession to you, Severus?" Albus said softly.

"You can't mean to imply you don't trust me," Severus shot back, just as quietly, and then said, "I wrote down the needed information. The _confession_ wasn't coerced from him."

And then he Occluded intently, because that wasn't entirely true, was it?

"You cannot allow Potter to attend another detention with that woman," Minerva chimed in, and for a time she and Albus squabbled with each other, leaving Severus to rest and think.

There was no conceivable way they could convince Umbridge to drop the remaining detentions. Though he'd only known her for a week, Severus was quite certain he knew everything there was to know about Dolores Umbridge—and her inability to back down was one of them. She was too prideful. She was arrogant and conceited, with an ego larger than even James Potter's, something he'd never thought possible. She was twisted enough to give Severus a run for his own money; and though her sickness showed in a different form, he could recognize the same lustings for Dark magic in her, that came from himself. This was not a woman who would back down easily.

"I can make her ill," Severus said, cutting off Minerva, and when Albus looked to him with clear reproach, he continued quickly, "Not fatally. A stomach flu. Something to lay her down for a week, perhaps two. She can't very well oversee his detention when she's unable to get out of bed."

There was a pause while his idea sunk in. "You've been looking poorly since this morning," Minerva said slowly, "and the students have been gabbing about it to no end. Perhaps there's something making its rounds about the school."

"Filch has already made an ally in her, Albus," he went on. "He accosted me in the corridor yesterday, raving like a madman. Umbridge knows he's, shall we say, _inspired_ by her. She'll no doubt delegate the remaining detentions to him if she's unable to supervise. Potter will be miserable, but he won't be in immediate danger of physical harm."

"You understand I cannot condone this," Dumbledore said quietly, looking between the three of them with eyes like steel. "To conspire against a fellow professor—"

"She's not a fellow professor," Minerva said impatiently. "She's a Ministry plant. And besides that, Albus, you cannot possibly mean to tell me you don't spend an ever-increasing amount of your day conspiring."

"She's a conniving toad masquerading as a human," Severus agreed.

"I cannot condone this," Albus repeated, looking weary, "but if what you say is true, Severus—"

"It _is_ true."

"—then I agree. Harry cannot return to her office. I will not allow it."

"You…agree," Severus said flatly, disbelieving, but he shook it off before Albus could retract his support. "I will do it tomorrow morning at breakfast. Send word to the elves, Headmaster, that they are not to replace her food once it's been tampered with. The potion will set in by midday. Poppy?"

Pomfrey had continued to dust the potions cabinet, shaking her head in silence. At the sound of his voice, she turned and said, "I believe I'm overdue for a visit to Saint Mungoes at, oh, midday…Healer Goorsemoor has been desperate to speak to me about a new treatment for dragon pox, and in the light of the latest outbreak among the students of Durmstrang last year, it would be foolhardy for me not to learn of this new treatment myself. I will unfortunately be absent from the school during that time. Headmaster, if that is all right with you…"

"Of course," Dumbledore said, with the slightest trace of irony. "The students come first, Madame Pomfrey. I will gladly excuse you at that time."

"Then it's settled," Minerva said. "Tomorrow morning."

"Albus?" Severus said eventually, when the room had fallen back into a pensive silence.

"Yes, Severus?" the Headmaster said heavily.

"I think I'm about to fall over again."

—

"Hey, Harry?"

The three of them had gone to bed late, because besides the interjection of the day's lessons, Harry had found that once he'd begun talking, it was nearly impossible to stop. Hermione had rejoined them for Care of Magical Creatures, and by then Harry had managed to overcome most of the initial discomfort and awkwardness that had permeated the beginning of his explanation to Ron. And though the two hadn't interrupted more than a handful of times, Harry knew they were listening. They nodded silently during their walks down the corridors. They hummed and gasped in the right places during dinner, when Fred and George had joined them. Ron had let his shepherd's pie go cold in his lack of hurry to eat. They'd retired to the common room that evening to sit in a secluded corner by the hearth, and until the fire had gone low and the rest of the room had emptied out, Harry had told them as many stories as he could remember from his time with the Dursleys. None of them had asked many questions; and for that he was grateful, because he wasn't sure he had any answers.

The bed next to his creaked, and then the drapes across his four poster were being pulled aside to reveal Ron. In the moonlight, his hair was oddly grey, leached of its usual vibrance. His skin looked luminous and his freckles stood out more starkly than ever. Harry fumbled for his glasses and looked at him blearily, pushing himself up on one elbow. "Yeah?"

Ron sat at the edge of his bed and pulled the drapes closed. They'd shared a bed before, back in their first and second years, during times where they'd just gotten away from Voldemort and were too afraid to sleep by themselves. In their third year it had become less common and by the time they'd reached their fourth, the bedsharing had petered out entirely. Even now, Ron looked supremely uncomfortable in his own skin as he settled himself next to Harry, who hurriedly scooted to one side to accommodate for Ron's longer frame. For a moment they didn't speak, staring in different directions, until finally Harry laughed a little and Ron relaxed.

"Sorry," he muttered, and in the darkness Harry could only faintly see him gesture to the drapes. "Didn't want Dean to wake up, light sleeper and all."

_Or Seamus, _Harry thought bitterly, because Seamus was still avoiding him—at least, as best as one could when they shared a bedroom with the object of their frustration.

"It's fine," he whispered, taking his glasses off again and settling back against his corner of pillow, which had been shoved to one side to give Ron a share. "Is something wrong?"

"Not really," Ron said, voice low. "Well…maybe. I dunno, Harry. I just—why'd you never tell us what was going on with the Dursleys? I could have done something, or Hermione. I could have told Mum and Dad. They would've let you stay with us. You know they love having you. And…and that they, I dunno, they _love_ you."

Harry's eyes felt a little wet, at that, but he passed it off as a sneeze and took the precious few seconds he had to wipe his eyes and nose to avoid answering. "Yeah, I know that," he said awkwardly, when he no longer had an excuse not to. "I suppose I just didn't think it mattered."

"Of course it matters," Ron said, a little too loudly. Neville snored thunderously and Dean turned over in his bed. Harry and Ron were quiet, waiting, until finally the room settled back down and Ron whispered, "Of course it matters. _You_ matter, Harry. Not just to me, but to Hermione, and Fred and George—bloody hell, even _Percy _doesn't mind you, or at least he didn't. Dunno anymore. Fred says his head is too far up his arse to mind anyone besides himself and Fudge, so don't take it personally."

"Yeah, but Fred has always said that," Harry murmured.

"Maybe he's a Seer, and he'll apprentice under Trelawney," Ron said, and they both had to put their hands over their mouths to keep from laughing too loudly. "Harry…_Harry_…look into my great, silver balls…"

Harry couldn't stop the snort that escaped him, and craned his neck to look around at Dean's bed. "Shut up, Ron," he hissed, though he knew his grin was telling. "You'll wake them up."

"Maybe Seamus wants to hear about Fred's giant balls too, Harry, don't leave him out of this."

"We'll have to send him to Snape to get a potion, if Fred's balls are that big," Harry whispered, and because the image of Snape's face if he were to be confronted by a student who needed his _bits_ shrunk was too much to bear, he finally laughed hard enough to have Neville jolting awake and Dean to say, "Wuzwrong?" as Ron mashed his face into Harry's pillow to keep quiet.

"Fred's balls, apparently," Harry chortled, and pushed Ron's head in further.

OOOO

OOOO

**So, hi. Yes, it's me. The man who forgot ffnet existed for months on end while he's ever-so-cheerfully been updating this fic on ao3. Yes. I am that man. I'm also terribly, terribly sorry this is so late. I'm going to be catching you all up to ch 9 with the rest of the class on a nice little schedule. so hi sorry**


	7. Chapter 7

The day began with the snap of the fingers, a cigarette, and the abject fury of one Poppy Pomfrey.

She caught him by the window overlooking the slope that ran down to Hagrid's empty hut, stubbing the butt out on the granite pane and exhaling a cloud into her clean air, and quite promptly ejected him from her Hospital Wing so that he could blacken his lungs someplace she couldn't watch. She'd even made sure to hex his robes into his face so that he could hide his blood-stiff jumper from any students he might pass. It was only a quarter past six, and the castle was cold and dark. All was going according to plan.

First he retreated to the dungeons, where he washed and reapplied his bandages, and donned himself in the most intimidating set of robes he could dig out in such limited time. He checked himself briefly in the mirror and crushed the impulse to Glamour his face so that he looked less peaky. Perhaps tomorrow, but not today. Today, he needed peaky.

So he took a deep breath, let his shoulders slouch, and trudged out of the room with three separate diuretics, two laxatives, and a vial of pure Snargaluff essence tucked into his pocket. And then he turned right back round in the corridor outside his rooms and grabbed a serum that gave the drinker ghastly genital warts, for good measure.

It was still early enough that the first of the students to be out of bed were yawning and bleary-eyed, but it didn't last long. Severus was making no effort to hide his sorry state. And the students, in turn, made no effort to hide the wide berth they gave him once they caught sight of whatever expression was currently on his face. It made his skin crawl to see the little terrors staring at him in such horror, but he knew full well if he didn't play the part properly, there would be no conceivable way Umbridge would believe she'd simply contracted a bug off him rather than been purposely sabotaged.

So he lumbered and sniffled, snarling wordlessly at all those who dared get in his way, even his own snakes. He reached the Great Hall at his slowest speed on record and settled himself with agonizing stiffness into the seat besides the one Umbridge normally took. There was no need to fake the pain. His entire body radiated with it, rippling up his spine with every breath. Sparks shot white-hot through his stomach every time he moved. Severus felt miserable. Thankfully, however, he was more than a little well-versed in the talents of spreading misery.

Umbridge made her way to the high table as the sun crept high and the Hall filled out. She settled herself in the chair next to Severus, as he'd hoped she would, and paused to study him. He made a point to conjure a handkerchief and blow his nose in her general direction. For a moment he was worried he'd gone too far, because her eyes flickered to a different seat a distance away—but then Potter, with uncharacteristically good timing (the entirety of the decade's reservoir, most likely), loped in with Granger and Weasley in tow. Umbridge stilled like a cat who'd caught sight of a mouse. Or perhaps, Severus thought snidely, like a frog who'd spotted a particularly juicy fly.

The irony was not lost on him that they both intently watched the boy settle himself among a horde of red-haired hellions. It rankled him. He sawed at his eggs to vent his frustrations, splattering ketchup like blood over his plate.

Severus waited patiently all throughout breakfast for an opportunity, but it was only as the meal was winding down to an end and Umbridge had nearly finished her second helping of sausages that he found his opening.

Her eyes were fixed on Potter across the room. Potter, who'd arrived far earlier than was the norm, and was snatching peeks at the head table as though trying to catch somebody in the act. Catch _him_ in the act, more than likely, because Severus had not forgotten what Minerva had let slip the night before. Potter had been the one to rouse the alarms on his state. _You will regret that dearly, _Severus tried to press at him during his own quick glances. And then, because he no longer had any eggs to relieve his anger towards, he forced a sneeze like an explosion right into the platter of kippers in front of him.

In an instant, Filius shot to his feet next to him, swearing under his breath and looking properly vexxed. His movement caused a ripple effect over the high table as others turned his way, and with them all distracted, Severus flicked his wand out of his sleeve and aimed towards a pot of coffee, which promptly upended itself in Pomona's lap. She leapt up with a shriek and at last Umbridge tore her gaze away from Potter.

Severus took the precious few seconds he had available to poison her sausages and doctor her tea, faking sneezes all the while. He was pretending to mop snot away from his face when the commotion died down and Pomona was on her way to the Hospital Wing. And with no more than a disgusted sniff and a shake of the head, Umbridge tucked back into her breakfast.

And privately, where he knew neither she nor the students could see, Severus smiled into his napkin.

—

Defense that morning was…interesting.

It began much the same as it normally did; with Umbridge trying to goad him, and Harry struggling to keep his temper in check. They'd been set to task learning the theory of _Reducto, _a very dull endeavor that consisted of flipping idly through the pages they'd been assigned without truly reading them. Harry could almost swear Seamus was snoring into the book he'd propped upright on his desk. He felt almost as though he'd been placed in a secondary History of Magic classroom.

And then the grumbling began.

It started out soft, like Ron's stomach sounded in the lesson before they let out for lunch. No one seemed to pay much attention until a second, louder grumble resonated in the silence like a foghorn, and finally Harry looked up from the page that had begun to blur in front of his face. For a moment he didn't know where it had come from—until it came a third time, and Harry locked eyes with Umbridge from across the room.

Umbridge, who was visibly sweating.

Then the smell hit. And suddenly Harry wasn't all too concerned about what Umbridge looked like, because at his side Hermione had gone as stiff as a board and behind him Ron was gagging out a, "What the bloody hell is that?"

All around him, people were muttering and waving at the air around their faces in a vain attempt to relieve themselves of the stench in the room. Harry lifted the front of his robes to his nose and tried to breathe through his mouth.

"_Hem hem,_"said Umbridge, though her smile was strained and her eyes were bulging from her head, "children, I did not tell you to stop reading."

"What's that _smell?_" Pavarti cried, pushing her chair back. It made an ungodly screech against the floor that only heightened the feeling of impending chaos in the room.

"I did not see you raise your hand, Ms. Patil," Umbridge sang, now gulping air like she was drowning. "Children, I must insist you return to your reading, or—"

Harry heard the largest gurgle of them all, and Umbridge's face drained of color so quickly she looked blanched. Then she snapped, in a voice pitched far higher than usual, "Class is dismissed! Everyone out, all of you."

None of them waited for her to take back the words. In an instant, Harry and the others were shoving books back into their bags, shoving chairs aside, and streaming from the room like they were being pursued. The classroom door slammed shut behind Dean, who jumped in alarm at the suddenness of it all.

"What the _hell_ was that about?" Ron demanded, glancing at the closed door. He, Harry, and Hermione rushed away with the others.

"I might have a hunch," Harry said, and they both turned to look at him. "I'm hoping I'm right."

—

"Potter," Snape said with the barest hint of a sneer, "stay behind. We need to discuss the tripe you've attempted to pass off for an essay."

Snape's tone was caustic and his eyes were cold and cruel, but at his words, Harry's heart leapt in his chest. He glanced once at the wall of classmates pushing themselves out the door, and met Malfoy's eyes. He mouthed something, but Harry was too focused on reigning in the smile that was threatening to break out over his face. "Yes, Professor," he said, hoping he looked as though he was holding back an angry outburst rather than a joyous one.

Ron and Hermione lingered at the threshold, but Harry waved them off and at last the door snapped shut, and he and Snape were alone.

"You did something to Umbridge," Harry said without preamble, lifting his hand to hide his grin, "didn't you?"

"I haven't the faintest idea what you're speaking of," Snape said dismissively. He was sitting stiffly at his desk, shoulders oddly hunched. The feverish sheen to his eyes had faded considerably, but he still looked drawn and sickly. And just like that, Harry's glee faded. He knew what Snape really wanted to talk about; it had been weighing on him from the moment he made his decision. Harry wasn't an idiot—he'd been aware from the start that Snape would know who had told. He'd just hoped that maybe…maybe Snape would be out for the count a bit longer, give him some time to come up with a reasonable excuse for having seen McGonagall.

But Harry didn't have time, and he was certain he wouldn't have been able to come up with a good enough excuse, anyway. "I told McGonagall," he said to his shoes.

"Yes," Snape hissed, "I am aware."

Harry didn't look at him. He didn't want to see what sort of expression was on Snape's face. "You can't be angry with me, you know. I'm just giving you back as good as you've given me. And anyway, it looked—it looked bad. Really bad. Did you, er, go to the Hospital Wing? Or did Dumbledore take care of it, maybe? How—how are you?"

When he glanced up, Harry found Snape had squeezed his eyes shut, and lowered his gaze again before he could catch him staring. "Potter, it does not—"

"—matter?" Harry finished, and clenched his fists at his sides. He shouldn't have expected anything less than this. "Yeah, you say that a lot."

"It doesn't _concern_ you," Snape ground out. "It is not your job to worry about the Dark Lord, or sneak about trying to glean information of his plans. This extends to worrying yourself about _me. _What you are supposed to be doing is schoolwork. Schoolwork, and studying. Leave concerns about the Dark Lord and his plans to others. It is not your job."

Harry gritted his teeth. "Because it's yours, isn't it," he muttered.

"Yes," Snape said, voice gone suddenly silky, "it is."

The expression on his face was one of supreme satisfaction. And that was, of course, because Harry had inadvertently stepped right into a trap. But he wasn't about to back down. "I don't know if you've somehow forgotten, but the _Dark Lord _murdered my parents. It's a little hard not to _concern_ myself with him, Snape."

Now Snape stood up, even though the movement obviously pained him. He began to rearrange the classroom with his back turned. "I haven't forgotten." His tone was as hard as ice. "Nor do I expect you to."

Trying to find something with which to distract himself, Harry looked around the room. Neville had forgotten what looked to be a Transfiguration essay, and at the desk Crabbe normally sat at was a coagulating heap of…something slimy. "Then what? Am I supposed to just let you bleed out alone? When would you have gotten help for whatever that was? You say it's not my concern, but maybe you don't realize it is my concern, because _I_ think it matters. You think I don't care if you die? Trying to stop the man who's after _me?_"

"The situation is infinitely more complicated than your miniscule brain can understand," Snape said, closing himself off like a book snapping shut. "Spare me the false platitudes."

"They're not false platitudes!" Harry burst out, breathing hard. "I know you don't think I should, because summer is over, but I actually give a damn about you. I don't care if you think I shouldn't." Knowing he'd begun to lose momentum, and that defeat was on his horizon by the way Snape's lip had curled into a familiar sneer, Harry finished lamely, "And I know you care, too. You gave me the book."

The sneer slid off Snape's face in increments, leaving him with an odd expression Harry couldn't even begin to guess at. Eventually, when the bell had already rung and Harry was readying himself to leave, Snape said, "One day you'll understand, Potter. Don't say I didn't warn you. If you leave now, I will write you a note. But if you insist on carrying on with this frankly absurd conversation, I shan't bother. Make your decision." Snape turned then, and pointed to the door.

Harry didn't budge, out of stubbornness now more than anything. "I have Binns next. I don't even think he knows I'm alive."

"He's about to find out," Snape said, still pointing. "Out, now, or you'll find your pumpkin juice tampered with come morning, and unlike Dolores Umbridge, your laxative will not be so slow to act."

At last Harry stormed from the room, tearing Neville's essay along with him as he went. The door slammed shut behind him. And Snape did not call after him.

—

Later that evening, Harry received a letter from Umbridge. He was to serve detention with Filch until further notice.


	8. Chapter 8

"Genital warts, Severus? Truly?"

For a moment, Severus didn't realize he was being spoken to, but when the shadow elongating over the book he'd opened on the table didn't retreat, he looked up to find Minerva standing at his side. It was late enough in the day that he hadn't expected anyone to come to the staff room; and indeed, Minerva looked as though someone had dragged her out of bed by force, because she was wearing a long tartan nightshirt under her dressing gown, and her hair was loose about her shoulders. Severus blinked once, glanced round at the empty gloom, and said scathingly, "I hope I haven't woken you."

Minerva scoffed and pursed her lips to tightly they nearly vanished. "Woken me?" she said tartly enough to rival the driest of red wines. "No, Severus, it was _Poppy_ who woke me with an urgent summons to the Hospital Wing, because apparently Professor Umbridge has mysteriously contracted a case of _genital warts._"

"How unfortunate for her," Severus said silkily, as he crossed one knee over the other and balanced his book open over it. "I certainly hope she didn't dawdle in seeking out Poppy. I have heard rumors—yes, Minerva, rumors—that sometimes when one forgoes a visit to their neighbor Healer, one might in fact find such…_undesirables_…a permanent fixture in their lives."

"Severus Snape, you bloody hypocrite," Minerva said, and he had to return to his book before the twitching of his lips could betray him.

"And why you?" he went on, turning a page. "Has the fact that Poppy has a Potions Master at her beck and call somehow slipped from her mind?"

"Are _you_ somehow failing to remember her patching a _hole_ in your _stomach_ a mere day ago? Consider yourself fortunate if she asks you for a favor anytime in the next decade, Severus."

Severus waited, but she didn't say anything more. "And?" he prompted, partly because he knew his non-answer would irritate her, but mostly because she showed no inclination towards leaving him in peace for the evening, so he might as well attempt to work information out of her.

"Genital warts?" she repeated, and at last he placed his thumb between the pages and closed the book.

"If you haven't noticed, Minerva, I have not invited you to sit, nor have I called for tea." Making a show of glancing down at his book, Severus looked up at her and said flatly, "What do you want."

"We agreed," Minerva said, "to have her bedridden."

"Is she not?" he asked. "Or has Poppy called you out of bed to tend to her corpse?"

"You'd have seen the Ministry storm the castle, if that were the case."

"Indeed. I could never be so fortunate, after all," he said dismissively, and leaned back again in his seat. He'd dragged his second-favorite armchair out of the corner (he had yet to recover his first choice, which had mysteriously disappeared over the holiday, and Albus was avoiding any questions about it), nestling it so close to the table they used for meetings that he felt vaguely caged-in. "Our esteemed Inquisitor will heal, much to my chagrin. The potion hadn't had enough time to set in fully before she no doubt fled to the Hospital Wing in horror. I _did_ say bedridden, but I never specified how I would go about doing it. This is still in the parameters of our agreement with the Headmaster. Have no fear, Minerva, I won't drag you down with me to sully your good name in Albus's books."

"You will be telling him I had no part in the decision to give her a sexually transmitted disease," she said dryly, and—yes, there, that was what she came to him for.

"It wasn't sexually transmitted, I can very much assure you."

She laughed then, and at last stepped away from the table. "I can't imagine it would be."

He went back to his book without preamble, cracking the spine back open with a satisfying _crunch_ of yellowing pages. The room was quiet again.

"Oh, Severus?" Minerva said from the doorway.

Severus looked up for what he prayed would be the final time, and was quite taken aback at the viciousness with which she smiled at him from the doorway. "Yes?" he said after a moment's pause.

"You do, I assume, remember telling Albus you would not _fatally_ harm Dolores, but I can't seem to recall you ever promising not to make her suffer." Her expression was cool and collected again, but there was a glint in her eye that had him setting his book aside entirely and straightening in his seat. "Next time—and yes, Severus, there will be a next time, I've known you since you were a wee lad and I'm not ignorant to your ways—next time, _do_ try to use a recipe that will make getting out of bed in the middle of the night worth my time. Perhaps one that causes monthly reoccurrences? You might even cycle it to the full moon."

And with that she closed the door, leaving him alone with a book that seemed suddenly, entirely uninteresting, and an itch in his hands that promised a week's worth of potion experimentation—and the realization that he now knew exactly who to test them all on.

—

It took seven days before Umbridge returned to her lessons—Severus knew, because he'd made a half-hearted attempt to wrangle Albus into allowing him to substitute some of her classes, with surprising success—and it was as though Potter was coming alive again at her absence. Where the first week of term had seen to the returning descent into the sullenness with which he'd arrived at Spinner's End, this one had been like watching a dying plant perk back up after being pushed back into a sunny patch.

Lessons were no longer an active study in social torture. There was less fighting in the corridors, less angry outbursts, and the dark shadows he'd seen beneath the boy's eyes slowly began to ease. He was eating at meals and no longer as slow to react in Potions. And when he turned in an essay that for once was not as shit as it might have been, Severus began to seriously consider poisoning his more troublesome colleagues on a regular basis, if only it meant less taxing lessons and a heftier paycheck for himself.

The week's reprieve and the looming promise of the weekend were all that kept Severus going in the meantime. Because on Wednesday morning, Umbridge returned, and she brought with her a renewed sense of justice: one that arrived in the form of Educational Decree Twenty-four.

It was a knock at his office door that began it all. He'd risen from a surprisingly restful sleep in the early hours of the morning, when dawn hadn't yet cracked and the floors of his rooms were still unbearably cold to the touch. He managed to drag himself up before the warmth of his bed pulled him back under, put on the thickest pair of socks he could find, and went to splash his face in the bathroom sink until his eyelids stopped trying to droop closed. Breakfast was taken alone at his cluttered coffee table, where he precariously balanced a bowl of porridge atop a stack of books and scrolls so that he could eat with one hand and continue his nth reread of _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ with the other. The rolley of healing potions Poppy had thrust upon him came immediately after, leaving his skin tingling and ears steaming as he retired to his bathroom to clean what remained of the gash on his stomach and rewind his bandages. Then he dressed, tugged on his shoes, and went down the corridor to his office to get a head start on the essays he'd promised to return in a day's time.

His office was scarcely warmer than his rooms had been, even after he lit a fire in the hearth and rubbed his hands together over it for a time. Unwilling to grade with numb fingers, he sat for a while, wiling away the time by alternating sucking on a cigarette and breathing hard into his palms. It was still early enough that the dungeon corridors had been void of life; breakfast in the Great Hall wasn't due to start for another half hour, perhaps more.

He had a double block lesson with the fifth-year Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs directly after breakfast, which promised to be an easy task, but the third year Gryffindor and Slytherin block he taught following was sure to be exhausting. They were brewing the Girding Potion today and he knew full well at least one of them would attempt to sneak some out under his nose. It would probably be a Gryffindor. It would _definitely_ be a Quidditch player.

His free period after lunch would be used to finish grading, because he knew full-well he wouldn't get through them all now. First, second, and third year essays weren't a difficult task, but grading the higher years' required more attention. Then he would take care of his NEWT level class. These were the lessons he preferred teaching the most, because most of the students were old enough to know not to be complete dunderheads. Those were the students he'd welcomed into his class, who actually cared enough to learn and experiment with all they could do with a cauldron. It was the only time Severus _enjoyed_ teaching.

Severus was on his third cigarette of the day and was contemplating calling one of the house elves for coffee when there came a knock at the door, followed by a quavering little, "Professor Snape?"

He stubbed the cigarette out on his desk and Banished the stumps of filter, then cast a quick air-freshening charm. The fire crackled furiously when he waved his wand and the door wrenched open with a blast of frigid air.

"What is it, Miss Espinel?" he said coldly, glaring across his desk at Nora Espinel, one of the few second-year Slytherins brave enough to bother him.

For the barest instant, she seemed ready to crumple in on herself before managing to regain her composure. "Sorry," she said, twisting the hem of her robes round her fingers, "but there's a—a notice? Posted in the common room. I thought—perhaps—you might want to see it?"

"Are you asking me?" he snapped as he bent to jam his shoes back on his feet, realizing for the first time how cold his toes had gotten, even through his socks. "Or telling me?"

"Telling, Professor," she said quickly, and skittered backward into the corridor as he stood and rounded his desk to move towards her. "It's caused a stir. The notice."

"Show me."

They walked in silence to the common room, cloudbursts of steam left by their breath trailing in the air above them like smoke. Cigarette smoke. Fuck, he wanted another cigarette. "How many have seen the notice?" he asked eventually, before they turned the corner that let out into the common room. "Have the prefects been alerted?"

"Parkinson, I think," she said nervously, "but Malfoy hasn't come down yet. Most of the older ones have already seen it."

_Excellent, _Severus thought sourly. Just what he needed, was a dawn frenzy—or, depending on the contents of said _notice, _an outright riot. One never could quite predict the reactions of large groups of children, even the prim and proper Pureblood ones. Even the 'cleanest' lineages and most meticulous breeding didn't stamp out the nature of children.

The Slytherin common room was as cold as anywhere else in the dungeons. The air caught in his chest with every breath, like he was slowly freezing from the inside out. His hands felt achingly numb and gooseflesh rose on his arms through the jumper he'd thrown on under his robes. A fire roared in the hearth like a beating pulse, lengthening the shadows on the walls so that everything and everyone in the room gave off a sinister cast, and the leather of the couches gleamed orange. Faces turned his way as he entered. The children's eyes and cheekbones were made cavernous by the light.

Before he did anything else, Severus cast several Hot-Air Charms throughout the room and gave the fireplace an extra spark. It seemed every student in his House had gathered to huddle round it as a ward against the chill, hands hovering recklessly over the open flames. When they turned to find the source of the sudden heat, every one of them snatched their hands back to their sides; he hadn't had to lecture any of his snakes yet this term on the dangers that came with putting your fingers too close to the hearth, but Severus was under no delusions that the first of many this year was well on its way. The youngest of the House were sure to have been regaled with over-embellished retellings of previous lectures. As much as he hated children, Severus knew them. Anything forbidden was automatically a challenge. It was the way of adolescence.

Natural selection, the Muggles liked to call it.

"Morning, Professor," Tracey Davis called out from the sofa nearest. The furniture had been pushed into a half circle before the fire to give the older students places to sit. The sofas were sure to be freezing to the touch, but anything had to be warmer than the stone floor the youngest members seemed to have been demoted to sitting upon. "Come to see the notice?"

"Where?" was all he said, and followed the outstretched arms that led to the dormitory staircase tucked into the corner of the room, where, as he rounded the bend, he now saw a large sign affixed to the notice board—and _large_ was an understatement. The sign was so vast he couldn't imagine anyone missing it on their way down to the common room. It overtook the House rules he kept pinned, covering up lists of secondhand books and robes for sale, and even hid the lost and found sheet (which, even so early in the year, was already well on its way to full). The letters on the notice were black as pitch and fucking hard to read in the flickering light, and at the bottom was an official seal Severus couldn't help but sneer at.

—BY ORDER OF—

**The High Inquisitor of Hogwarts**

All Members of the Faculty are henceforth forbidden from assigning detentions without the council of the High Inquisitor (Professor Umbridge).

Any punishment or meeting that occurs after a lesson is hereby defined as a detention. Permission to assign detentions may be sought from the High Inquisitor.

No meeting or detention may take place without the knowledge and approval of the High Inquisitor.

Any Member of the Faculty found to have assigned a detention without first consulting the High Inquisitor will be subject to an internal inquiry.

_The above is in accordance with Educational Decree Number Twenty-Four._

Signed:

Dolores Jane Umbridge

HIGH INQUISITOR

Severus read it once, then twice. Then he allowed himself to close his eyes, if only for the barest second, and breathe a sigh unheard by any but himself.

If one was lacking in entirely too many brain cells to read between the lines, they might have been able to fool themselves into believing the decree was formed as a way to ease the complications of scheduling for himself and his colleagues, but that was if (and only if) they were either too idiotic or blind to see the truth. This was only the beginning of the lengths Umbridge would go to take down the army the Ministry imagined Albus had built up with Potter. He was surprised it had taken this long for her to make the initial move. Curbing whatever she could of secret meetings between the Headmaster's supposed army wouldn't be the end of it—no. Oh, no. This was only the beginning.

And to think _he_ had been the one to light the bulb above her head, by denying her that night of detention with Potter.

Damn it all.

"Settle down, settle down," he called, as the din behind him grew in fervor. Then, raising his voice: "Miss Parkinson."

"Professor?" she said, sliding off the armchair she'd been perched upon.

"See to it that all those who have not yet read the notice take the time to do so. After all," he said silkily, "we mustn't take lightly the preachings of our esteemed Inquisitor."

Her smirk flickered for a moment, as though she wasn't certain he was being sarcastic. _Good, _he thought, _let her wonder._

"To the Great Hall now for breakfast," Severus said, and then caught Draco's eye as he descended the stairs to grace them all with his presence, far past the time he should have. "All except Miss Parkinson and Mr. Malfoy, that is. Miss Parkinson, see to it that Mr. Malfoy is updated on current affairs. And Miss Bulstrode—yes, I do mean _you, _Miss Bulstrode—take care to warm your hands. You cannot possibly hope to wave your wand if you lack the fingers needed to do so."

—

It wasn't only his House that was in a tizzy over the Educational Decree. The entire school was buzzing with it, all bent heads and lowered voices, like a hive network of bees working in tandem to spread chaos in lieu of pollen. They lingered together to murmur about it as the bell rang for lessons to start. They passed notes they thought he couldn't see, even though he'd chosen the tables in his classroom for a reason: both to discourage this exact scenario, and so that he could keep an eye out for potential trouble. Because out of everything, it was not the countless hours he'd spent practicing to shield his mind and become empty, or the endless nights he and Albus had exhaustedly worked through to hash out his cover stories and explanations to the Dark Lord upon his return. No; what had most helped Severus secure and keep his position as a double agent was a constant vigilance borne from teaching children how to brew explosives.

It was late on a Wednesday evening when Umbridge returned from the Hospital Wing, and dinner was already winding down to an end. He'd closed his office hours somewhere past six and dragged himself down to the Great Hall before Albus could harass him into joining the rest of the faculty for the meal, and by the time he'd gotten there, the students had had ample time to spread wild rumors about what the new Decree might have had to do with their professor's sudden, supposed quarantine.

The instant she strode through the doors with her simpering smile fixed pointedly in place, the talk and laughter in the Great Hall snapped away like cold air whipping in through a window in winter. It took more than a few seconds for it to start back up again, and afterwards, it was somehow muted. More distant and subdued than it had been minutes before.

She settled herself in the seat beside his and spread a napkin daintily across her lap. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she served herself dinner, using his fork to shove his beef stroganoff from one side of his plate to the other. The prongs grated against the china with every pass over. He could see a muscle in her jaw twitch.

Eventually, sick of the sound himself, he reached over to pour her tea, fixing it with cream the way he'd seen she liked it. It would normalise it; because as Minerva had said, he was nowhere near done with this woman. "I do hope you're no longer feeling poorly," he said, smiling thinly at her, even though he ached to seize her by the back of her hair and slam her face into the prongs of her fork. (Maybe she'd scream. Maybe she'd be too stunned to make much sound at all.)

He blinked the thoughts away with practiced ease and sipped his water.

"I'm quite all right," she simpered, though he could practically feel the lie in her voice, in her face. "Thank you, Severus."

Disguising the fact that he was still watching her, Severus tore a chunk of bread in half and used it to mop up some of the broth on his plate, chewing slowly and carefully. To his left, Umbridge was tearing into her own meal with a voraciousness that made him feel vaguely ill. So when she slowed to a stop, he noticed immediately. Severus watched her from behind his water goblet, following her line of sight to—of course—the Gryffindor table, where Harry Potter was looking up at them.

Her face had gone still and quiet, like an owl who'd caught sight of a mouse scurrying through the underbrush. There was a deep-seated rage etched into the lines of her face, and the beginnings of a snarl tugging at the corners of her wide mouth. Severus recognized the hatred, the anger, the inherent need to destroy. It was twisted. It was familiar.

_I will not let her touch you, _he promised silently, a dark sort of heaviness winding in his chest. _Not now, not ever again._

Dinner ended uneventfully, and the walk back to the dungeons was like shifting through seasons in the blink of an eye. It had not been a particularly warm day, but the cold embedded into the stonework of the castle was like stepping into a snowdrift, and he could see his breath puffing in the air by the time he was halfway down the stairs. He passed by students as he went, vigorously rubbing their hands together or applying heating charms. Perhaps he needed to appeal to the Headmaster about finding better alternatives to the dungeons, or adding another fireplace in the common room…Severus remembered all too well the achingly cold nights spent in the boy's dormitory, when even the extra blankets and hot water bottles the house elves brought didn't take a chunk out of the chill that seemed to seep straight into your veins.

The students became fewer and fewer as he walked, turning the corner from his office corridor and down a narrow passage, and then round the final bend to his rooms. He spelled the door open and stepped through.

There was a gust of air that passed by him on his way through the door, like a breath of wind against his side, and Severus stopped in his tracks. There were no windows, so far down in the dungeon, though one time in seventh year Rosier had charmed one into their dormitory. The spell had gone terribly wrong and fire had rained down inside the image for three days before Wilkes finally convinced him to just get rid of the damned thing. But, barring the magical kind, there were no windows anywhere near his rooms. Nothing besides a ghost could have made a gust of _anything_ down here, and the Bloody Baron was nowhere in sight.

He schooled his expression into something unconcerned and closed the door. Turning away, even though it made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, he kicked off his shoes, pulled his teaching robes over his head, and tossed them aside. They landed in a heap on the floor with yesterday's set. Then he went to his creaky sofa and sat down, hiding his wand in the sleeve of his jumper. He sighed. He waited.

He didn't need to wait long, because only a minute later, from the corner came a near-silent breath. Severus was back on his feet in an instant with his wand in hand. "_Petrificus Totalus!_" he snarled. There was a bright flash as the Body-Binder hit its target, a cut-off shout—and the intruder fell with an almighty _crash, _tumbling over the floor as an invisibility cloak pulled away to reveal a boy with black hair and a lightning bolt scar.

"Oh," Severus said as Harry Potter's frozen body juddered to a stop at his feet. "_Fuck__._"

OOOO

OOOO

**And with that you're all caught up I basically said screw it and threw out my plans to upload it on a bit of a schedule. Instead I'm just going to overwhelm your inboxes with my spam. ur welcome. I've got like 2k written for the next ch so hopefully work isn't terrible and I can finish and upload it soon bc whew. But for now, all caught up!**


	9. Chapter 9

There is a fairly graphic depiction of injuries from physical (child) abuse in this chapter. It's in the second scene. I'll be including a TLDR at the end of the chapter for those who can't read it, so that you won't feel like you're missing out on anything major. Love you guys, take care of yourselves, don't read it if it's triggering to you.

ooooo

When Harry opened his eyes, it was to find he was no longer where he'd been when he last closed them.

His glasses were missing, and he was lying on a couch so cracked and worn he could feel the leather upholstery peeling beneath his fingerprints, as fine and tangled as rivers on a map. But though it was old, it was comfortable, and he had to fight to keep from succumbing to the sleep tugging at his eyelids. His shoulder throbbed when he moved and there was a blanket draped over him, thick and heavy, scratchy like wool. His fingers felt clumsy and swollen when he nudged it away from the irritated skin of his throat. It was cold—very cold. As itchy as it was, the blanket was a welcome reprieve from the frigidity in the air that he knew only too well from his years taking lessons in the dungeons. The pillow beneath his head felt cool to the touch when he reached back to rub his aching neck. A new wave of exhaustion rolled through him, dragging him back under like an anchor to a boat, but Harry shook it off and blinked his vision as clear as he could get it. The ceiling above his head was dark and dusty, washed aglow by some unseen source of light. When he turned his head, his skull throbbed like he'd been smacked by a Bludger.

"You understand, I hope," came Snape's voice somewhere off to his right, "that this is entirely inappropriate, and I should have you expelled for it."

Harry sighed, long and slow, before looking around for him. It took a few seconds, because Snape was so enshrouded in gloom that at first his eyes passed over him entirely, until he caught on a patch of skin and then the sharp line of his jaw, and suddenly the rest of him came into view. Snape was seated in an armchair reminiscent of the one at Spinner's End, cross-legged so that he could balance a book over one knee. And though Harry distinctly remembered him taking it off before he found himself petrified, Snape was once again in his teaching robes. They were so dark they seemed to swallow the warmth of that distant light.

"You can't get angry," he mumbled, and tried to sit up, but the blanket was wrapped too tightly around him. "I had to talk to you. S'bloody cold."

"It's the dungeons," Snape ground out, and stood. "And you are a blasted fool. Do you have any idea how badly you have jeopardized my—our—positions tonight? Do you know what would happen if _that woman _had noticed you were missing, or had keyed the faculty's wards to alert her of an entry from anyone besides the one _living_ here? She is already monitoring the Floo network—yes, Potter, that is legal, albeit dubiously—and intercepting mail."

"Intercepting mail? But that's—"

"Breaking laws you likely don't even know the names of? Yes. You will come to find, Potter, that there is not much Dolores Umbridge would consider to be beyond her. You need only ask Remus Lupin for evidence of that."

"I know she's evil, but I had to come here," Harry protested, and this time when he tried to sit up, he succeeded. He found his glasses on a side table, teetering dangerously atop a stack of books, and the room came into sharp relief before him.

A coffee table lay between them, though at first it was hard to tell; there were books and scrolls piled across every spare inch, leaning against one another, tipping rather precariously at the edges. Some of them were all over dust, but many looked new and recently used. In the dim lighting, it was hard to tell, but Harry caught a glimpse of what he thought might have been a drawing of a tree, so finely inked it looked near professional. It was a wonder anyone could even think to use the table for its intended purpose. And perhaps Snape didn't, because Harry knew all too well his skills in the kitchen, and he'd always seemed to take the majority of his meals in the Great Hall anyway.

"I couldn't exactly send an owl," Harry went on, "and I hadn't wanted to stay over or come during office hours, just in case it somehow violated that new decree Umbridge put up."

"It very well might have. And that is precisely why you need to exert _some_ level of caution now. Caution you most certainly did _not_ exert tonight." He clicked on a second light next to the armchair, a tall, heavy-bottomed lamp Harry hadn't noticed before.

Snape's private quarters weren't as gloomy as he'd expected, but the dungeons and the impoverishment of Spinner's End left their mark here, too. The furniture, though comfortable, was old and worn, and the rug on the floor was faded. The entire sitting room had the distinct feeling of a place left unattended for too long. The top of the hearth was as dusty as the scrolls on the coffee table, and like his house in Cokeworth, Snape had left his walls unadorned and barren of any personal effect. The one and only sign that someone lived here at all (besides the teaching robes left on the floor by the door) was a single painting hung over the fireplace, displaying a cottage nestled in a bright meadow. It wasn't something Harry had expected to see hanging in Snape's rooms, of all places, and for a moment he couldn't tear his eyes away.

"I had my cloak," he said after he'd had his fill of the painting, "and the map."

"Two items that could very easily fall into the wrong hands," Snape snapped back, now picking up the robes on the floor and shaking them out, like he knew Harry had been thinking about them. "You should not rely on them so much that you forgo learning to use your own wits instead."

Harry sighed and said nothing, gaze trailing back to the painting.

"Is that all?" Snape demanded. "You have nothing more to say? You might have written this into an essay for me to see, rather than risking life and limb to break into my private quarters."

Looking away from the painting again to stare instead at his lap, Harry tried not to let Snape see just how embarrassed he felt. He'd never thought about putting messages into his essays; though of course, he didn't like to write Snape's essays, let alone think about them on days he didn't have one _to_ think about. "I hadn't thought of that," he admitted to his hands.

But he _had_ thought of leaving a note some other way, only to throw the entire idea aside, because in the end what Harry had really wanted was a chance to speak to Snape face-to-face. Not only to ease the anxiety that had risen in him from the moment he'd read the new decree, the question of what was to happen next, but also to see for himself that Snape truly had healed from whatever injury he'd had. (And because Snape would never have allowed him in here otherwise.)

A week had gone by since he'd had so much as a minute to speak to Snape alone, shields and fronts down, and he'd begun to feel—twitchy, for lack of a better word. It was like Dumbledore's steadfast avoidance of him, but maybe worse. No, it was definitely worse, because since _when_ had he—or _anybody_ in their right mind—started to enjoy the company of Severus Snape enough to feel irritated by its absence?

"But that isn't all, no," Harry said after a pause, because Snape was growing visibly more agitated by the second. "I'm dreaming about that—that corridor again. You know the one. You saw it during Occlumency."

Snape stilled, and with his back turned, Harry didn't know what kind of expression might have been on his face. He waited anxiously. "Have you been practicing before you sleep?"

"I have." It was the truth; he'd practiced nearly every night for the last week, even though he knew it wouldn't be enough to keep Voldemort out. Not when their connection was so strong. "But it isn't working. It's not…enough."

Snape turned around and stood there for a moment, tracing his bottom lip with his thumb. He didn't speak for a beat, and then: "I will speak with the headmaster about this."

"There's just something about it, you know? It all seems so _familiar_ somehow," he went on, grabbing the blanket in his clenched fists. "I don't know where or when, but I know I've seen that corridor somewhere. I just don't know where."

"Have you perhaps hazarded a guess that it might seem familiar because you _dream of it every night?_" said Snape, sounding entirely well and finished with the conversation.

It was the most reasonable explanation, but Harry knew it was different from that. He hadn't felt that familiarity until quite recently, after…when? What had changed? Did it have something to do with Voldemort, or had Harry himself somehow seen it somewhere outside of his dream? What was the connection? "I don't think so," he said quietly, frowning at his hands. "There's just something about it…like I've been there before."

"I'll speak with the headmaster tomorrow morning, then," Snape muttered around the thumbnail he was gnawing on. "We can't allow this to continue. We need to resume Occlumency lessons at the earliest opportunity."

It was what Harry had been afraid of, but even as he resigned himself to the impending doom, his heart leapt in his chest at Snape's casual usage of "we." The sensation lasted just long enough for a realization to drop onto him like a sack of bricks. "We can't," he said, drawing Snape's attention back to him. "The decree. If Umbridge finds out—"

"I have spent the last four years shepherding you back into bed at all hours of the night, and out of Hogsmeade when not one part of you had been given permission to be there. Do not play at innocence. You have stolen from my private stores—"

"That wasn't me," Harry said hotly, but Snape cut him off.

"Do not interrupt me. You have stolen from me, you have set off fireworks in my classroom with no regard for danger or injury, and you have only just broken into my private quarters. And now you mean to tell me, Potter, that you have been struck by the sudden desire to follow the rules?" Snape leaned against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, face hard as stone. "Do you mean to tell me sneaking about has lost its luster? Could this not have happened, perhaps, in your first year?"

Harry glared at him, unwilling to back down. "It never really mattered before, if I got into trouble," he shot back. "Hermione and Ron, maybe, but the Dursleys wouldn't have given a damn if they sent an owl home. Uncle Vernon would chase it out of the house before it could even _give_ them the letter."

"And it matters now?"

"Yeah," Harry snapped, "because now _you'd_ get in trouble, and maybe I actually give a damn about _that, _Snape."

He managed to look somehow more frustrated than he had before. "You shouldn't be concerning yourself with me. That is not your job."

"Whose job is it, then?" he shot back. "Why can't I _concern_ myself with you?"

"There are a multitude of reasons why you shouldn't like me, let alone want to even be near me," Snape said, breathing hard. He turned away again and gripped the neck of the lamp hard, like he was fighting the urge to knock it to the floor. "None of which your brain would be able to properly compre—"

"Then throw me out!" Harry ground out through clenched teeth, feeling infinitely more tired than he ought to have. "Throw me out now, and don't speak to me again outside of lessons."

For a moment, Harry was terrified Snape would call his bluff—that he would be shown out and left in the corridor without a second glance. He forced himself to keep eye contact, palms sweating against the blanket he still held in his fists, back tense—and then Snape looked away, shoulders slumping like he was feeling that same endless exhaustion.

"Why do we keep arguing like this?" Harry asked, trying not to sound as anguished as he felt. "We weren't this bad during the summer, at least near the end, but now it's like…I dunno. I'm just so _angry_ all the time, and I don't know why. I don't mean to take it out on you, Professor. I guess I'm just…worried. About everything."

"It's past curfew," Snape said after a long period of silence, all fire gone out of him. "Your friends will be wondering where you are. Did you think to tell them what you would be doing, or are they upstairs frothing at the mouths thinking I've thrown you into a dungeon chasm?"

"They wouldn't—" Harry began, and then thought better of it, because it hadn't taken much for Hermione to willingly set Snape on fire back in their first year, and she knew many more spells (and methods) than that nowadays. "Well, all right. They would. I told them I'd be late, but I didn't tell them where I'd be."

Snape fixed him with a glare but said nothing. "Upstairs, then. I'll escort you…I'm due to begin my rounds anyway, and I've a history of wandering about the school at night, so if that woman comes calling it won't be seen as uncharacteristic of me. Up, Potter."

Casting the blanket aside, Harry stood on trembling legs, testing their strength before fully committing. They'd fallen asleep somewhere between the time he'd been petrified and woken, and he hadn't had a proper chance to rub the feeling back into them. "Bit shaky," he said to Snape, who was watching him like a hawk. "Just a moment, I'll be fine."

He cast about the sitting room in search of his belongings and found them bundled neatly together on a small wooden dining table that looked, impossibly, more neglected than everything else in the room, like it was used only on special occasions, and even then only sparingly. The invisibility cloak fell over him in a silken wave when he pulled it on, as soundless as smoke. He tucked the Marauder's Map into his pocket, patting it down to ensure it sat securely, and turned around to find that Snape was still watching him intently. His face was inscrutable.

Harry met his gaze without flinching. "I'm ready," he said, and drew the cloak over his head.

As they walked, Harry tried to memorize the path to Snape's quarters, but it was such a twisty walk that by the time they reached his office, he had to admit defeat. The air grew warmer on their way out into the castle main; at the stairs leading out to the Great Hall, Harry drew the map from his pocket and gave it a cursory glance. Professor Sprout was close by, but far enough that conversation wouldn't reach her.

"Professor," he whispered, only just loudly enough to be heard past the resounding drum of the bell chiming the hour, rattling through his bones. How late was it? "How are we supposed to get permission for Occlumency lessons?"

"Remedial potions, perhaps," Snape muttered out of the corner of his mouth. He stared straight ahead, appearing entirely unconcerned, but there as they passed under a ring of torchlight, Harry could see he was smirking. "No one could ever claim you to be a Potions prodigy."

_Thanks, _Harry thought sourly, but wisely kept the thought to himself.

They halted at the base of the grand staircase when there came a soft shuffling from out in the Hall, but it was only Mrs. Norris, who stared directly at Harry with lamp-like yellow eyes. "I think she can see through cloaks," he said. "I've noticed it before."

"Then get moving, before we're delayed by Filch," Snape hissed. They ascended the stairs, leaving Mrs. Norris far behind them.

It was odd in more than a few ways, to walk alongside someone he'd hated for years yet now found himself putting more faith in than he ever had with an adult before. It wasn't that Harry didn't trust the adults in his life—quite the opposite, in many cases—but not many of them had taken direct action for him in the way Snape had. He'd been one of the very few to speak out against the Dursleys, even as he adamantly denied any such thing; and he had freed Harry from his detentions with Umbridge in a way that had also allowed him the chance to catch up with his schoolwork in her absence. He hadn't even let Harry cook for him every night. At the time, he'd resented Snape for it, because it had felt like a punishment. But as the days went on…it had felt less like discipline, and more like an acknowledgement of something far greater than Harry could so far understand.

Snape did a lot of things, in his own furtive, prickly way, that felt a lot like small acknowledgements. He was bitter and angry and held everyone at such a distance it was a wonder he had any semblance of a social life at all. But he was also the man who had taken the time to teach him Occlumency. He'd taken time to help him with his summer homework and give him personal lectures, and had brought an old telly downstairs so that he would have something to occupy him on the days that seemed to drag on forever. Snape had loved his mother in some shape or form, and had become Harry's fiercest protector from the moment he had arrived at Hogwarts. He was cynical and cut everyone down without seeming to even think about it—yet Harry had never felt truly seen by any adult in such a way. It was the knowledge that Snape knew where he came from, _what_ he came from, and accepted him anyway—because he had known the same life Harry did. Maybe it was wrong, to feel comradery for such a terrible reason, but the comfort it brought him outweighed anything else.

And maybe, in the end, Harry thought as he climbed through the Fat Lady's portrait and left Snape standing in the corridor outside with the mere breath of a "goodnight," that was all that really mattered.

—

On Thursday, Severus received his first—but not final—visit from a student needing treatment for a wound that had been left to its own devices for far too long.

The boy came in the night to knock on his office door, which had been keyed years ago to ring an alarm in his quarters for this exact purpose. Severus dragged himself out of bed and into a dressing gown, and shoved his shoes half-blindly onto his feet before he Floo'd directly into his office to answer the call. The face that greeted him from the doorway was flushed deeply. Aedan Locket was a student Severus had been observing since the moment he'd arrived at Hogwarts, and he'd been waiting for this day to come for three years since. He'd been rail thin then, even for an eleven-year-old, with shadows dark as coal under his eyes and hair a little too oily to have simply come from a child not yet concerned with their physical appearance. Now he leaned heavily on the doorframe, eyes fever-bright and glazed like he was barely lucid, barely able to stand.

"Professor," he said, though it came out more like a slur. "I need help."

Severus took him in without a word, settling him in the chair behind his desk and took the hard-backed wooden one he kept before it for himself. Casting a quick _Muffliato_ at the office door, he asked without preamble, "Where?"

"My back," Locket whispered, either too delirious to question how Severus had so easily guessed, or simply beyond caring. "I think they've gotten worse. I thought they were healed, but…"

Conjuring a pair of Muggle rubber gloves, Severus pulled his chair round the side of the desk so that they were only a foot apart. He pulled on the gloves. "Robe off. Turn round."

Locket's back was a map of scars new and old, but the most glaring of them all were four long lashes, like whip lines embedded into his skin. It was hard at first to tell with the boy's dark skin and the dim lighting, but the edges of the scores were deep red, and two were oozing pus. It was not a wound made by physical means, but ones made by spells could often be infinitely worse. He would need to tread carefully.

He never condemned any of the children who came to him, even when it was clear they had waited far too long before seeking help. Severus knew full-well laying judgement would only ensure they kept to themselves the next time; and that next time might be the _last_ time. Of all the things Severus Snape was, a murderer was not one of them. He might look the other way when he saw the signs. He might not tell his colleagues unless absolutely necessary, or breathe a word of what he knew to Albus—but nights like this had always been different. Never had a child died under his watch, and if he had any say about it, no child ever would.

Against his better judgement, because he knew from experience that all it ever really did was give you a dull headache, Severus Conjured a handkerchief and bundled it together in a wad. "Put this in your mouth," he said, "and bite down. This is going to hurt—badly."

"W-What are you going to do?" Locket asked, and his voice was a little too shrill.

"I have to lance the wound and drain it. I will be cutting it back open. It won't feel pleasant."

He was glad he'd cast _Muffliato_ from the start, because by the time Severus had opened the first of the scores lining the boy's back, Locket was already screaming through the gag. It was hard to be gentle when he knew he had to move quickly, but he tried his best, even when the stench of infection had his eyes stinging, and the blood coating the boy's back made his fingers slip on his skin. He had to pause near the end when it became too much. They both sat breathing hard for a few long moments. Severus composed himself, managed a quiet, "Last one," and dove back into the work.

At these times, it was impossible to detach himself entirely. The memories were too close, the nausea in the pit of his stomach too heavy. He'd thought, back when he first began teaching and the very first of these children had come calling in the dead of night, that it would get easier over time; that he could perhaps learn to desensitize himself to their pain. It had never happened. And perhaps that was for the best. He'd never known why the students came to him. _Him_, of all the other professors. Their greasy, bitter House head, who'd made students cry regularly before he learned to restrain himself just enough that his remarks were ego-reducing rather than hysteria-inducing. There were others more sensitive, more compassionate, that taught here. But in the end, Severus knew deep down it was because these children had seen something in him that was hauntingly familiar. It was the same with Potter. That horrible sense of _knowing_.

Because really, hadn't Severus always known Harry Potter had been abused? Hadn't the knowledge always been there, lingering in the corners of his mind, where he wouldn't consciously allow himself to recognize it? The summer had changed it. Severus had ignored the truth as long as he could, too blinded by the decades of hatred that had rooted itself into his very soul—and that truth would keep him awake at night for as long as he lived.

Though he felt like he should be shaking, Severus's hands were steady as he packed in the wounds and fastened bandages round Locket's back. There were tears streaming down the boy's ruddy face and snot crusting his nose, and the handkerchief clenched between his teeth was soaked through. "You can take that out now," Severus said quietly. Locket didn't move, so Severus removed it for him, and Banished it. "Stay seated. I'm calling for tea. Dobby?"

Lucius's old house elf appeared with a crack that had Locket flinching in his seat, even with the warning. "What is Master Severus wanting of Dobby?"

"Hot chocolate and toast," Severus said. He hated calling for elves, hated the simpering, but it was late and he wasn't about to leave the boy alone after such an ordeal.

Tea was delivered moments later, and before Locket could reach for his chocolate, Severus pulled out the brandy he kept for precisely these moments. "The one who gave you these," he said before unstoppering the bottle. "Does he get drunk before he hits you?"

"N-No," Locket stuttered, looking vaguely bewildered.

He knew Albus would skin him alive if he ever found out the methods he used to keep these children from becoming shell-shocked by the experience, and that Minerva would be glad to take a turn right after, but Severus added a dash of brandy to the chocolate anyway before sliding it over to the boy. "Drink. And if you can stomach it, eat."

It was odd for a man to not keep alcohol in some capacity, but Severus never drank anything stronger than coffee. He'd tried, once, back in his sixth year. Slytherin had won the House Cup and a few of the older students had smuggled fire whiskey into the resulting celebration. It had taken all of ten seconds for Severus to decide it could never be. The smell had been all-consuming. So he'd never drank any of the brandy himself, half-empty though it was. He'd never allowed himself a single sip. He avoided bars when he could and the staff parties whenever possible. Never once had he stayed for dinner after an Order meeting; not only because of Black and Moody, but because he knew the mutt would be popping corks the moment dinner was served.

Locket finished his chocolate and ate a slice of toast before pushing the rest of the plate away. His hands were shaking badly, so Severus helped him back into the robes he'd thrown haphazardly over his pyjama trousers. And then the room was quiet as Severus cleared the last of the food away and returned the brandy to the bottom drawer of his desk.

"Are you going to tell anyone?" Locket whispered, staring at his fists clenched together in his lap. Even through his robes, his spine was so prominent it hurt to even see it. Severus had to focus his gaze elsewhere, breathing slowly and steadily.

"Yes," he said, because there was no use in lying about it. "I will be telling somebody."

Locket didn't speak for a beat too long, and then he nodded jerkily. "Right. Yeah, okay. I thought you might, but I didn't—I couldn't…It was too much, this time."

Gaze fixed firmly on a jar of rat spleens on the shelf behind his desk, Severus said, "You need to see Madame Pomfrey in the Hospital Wing. If not tonight, then first thing tomorrow. I've lanced the infection but I don't have, at this time, the means to cure it."

"But you're a Potions Master," Locket said, lifting his head at last.

"And who do you think has spent every bit of his free time replenishing the potions stores in the Hospital Wing for the past two weeks?" Severus said pointedly. "My own stocks are depleted. Now, on your feet. If you can walk confidently out of my office, you can see her come morning. If not, I'll escort you upstairs."

After a tentative few steps on wobbling legs, Locket managed to make his way round the office twice before Severus cleared him to leave. "Tomorrow then, Professor," the boy said on a sigh. "Thank you."

"I'll be in my office. Come here before breakfast. Do not make me drag you there by force, or you'll live to regret it," he warned, shepherding him out into the corridor. The door clicked shut behind him, and for a moment Severus stood in the silence he'd left behind, before at last he drew a sheet of parchment from his desk drawer and wrote the first name on the list he'd promised Lupin all those weeks ago.

—

One day he was going to have to tell Potter the truth of what—who—had caused the death of his parents, and that would be the end of the truce they'd built over the past month. Severus knew this above all else. The knowledge was with him at every moment of every day, from the moment he woke up to the moment he went to sleep. He'd spent the last fourteen years of the boy's life dreading that day, that finality. And as the years went by, Severus could feel it looming ever closer, like the ticking of a bomb.

He should have been pushing the boy away. Keeping him at arm's length, speaking only when absolutely necessary, in hopes that it would sting less for both of them when the time finally came. But he knew he wouldn't do it. Because really, in the end, Severus had never been anything more than a selfish bastard. And if Wednesday night was any indication, Potter would be certain to take more drastic measures than breaking into his quarters if he ever tried to shut him out for good.

So he would enjoy the peace while it lasted, and hold the crushing guilt at bay just as he always had.

Though it had been a cool, mild day, the kitchen of Number 12 Grimmauld Place was swelteringly hot. From the moment he'd descended the stairs he'd begun to sweat and by the time he reached the bottom, strands of hair had already plastered themselves to his temples and his shirt was clinging to his back beneath his robes. The rest of the Order was faring no better. Most stood apart from each other, fanning themselves with their hands or robe sleeves or even a piece of parchment. Cooling charms were petering out as fast as they could spell them; the great fire roaring at the far end of the room ensured that.

He side-stepped Molly Weasley, who was mopping at her forehead as she bustled about situating chairs round the table. Her hair had gone scraggly and wild in the humidity and her eyes were red-rimmed like she'd been weeping recently. Arthur was seated at the table in the chair nearest the door, and when Severus entered the kitchen he looked round to meet his gaze. The moment lasted only a moment, but Severus felt vaguely shaken by it all the same. He hadn't truly spoken to Arthur since the day he and the other two dunderheads had stormed his house under the delusions that there had been an attack. He hadn't _wanted _to speak to Arthur since.

And worse than that, Severus thought as Remus Lupin noticed his presence and made his slow, steady way across the room towards him, he hadn't so much as sent a letter to the werewolf since that night in Hogsmeade, already half a month ago.

"Stifling in here," Lupin said lamely, stopping just close enough to him that they could speak without being overheard—though whether it was out of respect, or because the very idea of being near someone was out of the question in such heat, Severus didn't know. Nor did he really care. "How have you been?"

"Spare me the pleasantries," Severus said, and then paused to add, quieter, "Fine."

Then he Occluded a tad harder, because though Lupin was no more an Occlumens than Potter was a Potions prodigy, that was most certainly not true whatsoever, and he didn't want any trace of it to show on his face.

"Pleased to hear that," Lupin said, mild as ever, and Severus knew then that the wolf was aware he was lying.

The meeting began before he could say something undoubtedly nasty or—even more unthinkably—apologize for leaving him in Hogsmeade without so much as a goodbye. Dumbledore swept into the room in robes of brilliant yellow, which shimmered orange as a sunset when the light of the fire glinted off of them. There was an eruption of noise as the Order settled in at the table; chair legs grated on the stone floor, Cooling charms were recast in vain, corks were popped from bottles, and in the background of it all was the ever-present crackle of the flames in the hearth. Already his headache was worsening. He'd gotten a terrible night's sleep once Locket left and should have had the foresight to bring a headache draught with him. And yet, here he was…

He secured himself a place at Albus's side, feeling relief in the relative safety of the Headmaster's close proximity, but that relief turned instantly to irritation when Lupin took the seat to his left and pulled his chair in a little too close. "Needing someone to hold your hand through the proceedings, Lupin?" he sneered, tucking his arms in close so that no part of him made any move, conscious or unconscious, to drift too close to the wolf.

"Are you offering?" Lupin shot back, straight-faced. Albus shifted slightly in the cushy, overstuffed monstrosity of an armchair he'd conjured up, but didn't speak. Severus willed himself to believe he hadn't heard any of what Lupin had said, or the reason for it.

"Fuck you," Severus breathed, eyeing the Headmaster out of the corner of his peripheral vision.

"Too hot for that," came the whispered response, and all at once Severus was grateful for the heat, because what was one more flushed face in a room full of them? He lifted his arms a tad in an admittedly useless attempt to get air flowing, cleared his throat—and then had to disguise a bad start as a sudden sneeze when Lupin's knee grazed his own beneath the table.

"Gesundheit," the Headmaster said from his right, in a tone so serene it had to be fake—and when Severus managed to glance at him through the mortification prickling up his spine, he found Albus's expression as inscrutable as the patterns of the pockmarks in the wood of the table. Severus looked away, cleared his throat again, and didn't respond.

_I will kill you, _he promised silently when Lupin's knee touched his own again. He felt like a foolish schoolboy exchanging notes beneath a desk. _Painfully, slowly, I will—_

"Severus," Albus said suddenly, and for one heart-stopping instant he thought the Headmaster might have decided to call them out after all, until he continued: "Your report, if you would."

He was sweating worse than before as he stood to give his report, and had to force himself to focus on absolutely anything but the heat before he felt collected enough to speak in full sentences, let alone give a speech.

"The Dark Lord has sent Death Eaters to act as delegates to the giants," he began. "I believe they may be attempting to sway influence away from Hagrid and towards the Dark Lord's cause."

The rest of his report was sparse, but it couldn't be helped. The Dark Lord had still not made a move, or at least none so large it had been noticeable to the public. The Ministry had their heads buried in the sand and their wands up their arses, the Wizarding community at large was too frightened to so much as consider the possibility of another war, and all the while behind the scenes Tom Riddle played puppet master. Building his ranks. Fostering alliances with all manner of Dark or powerful creatures.

"Is that all?" Moody growled when Severus came to an end. Even he looked overwhelmed by the roaring of the flames, with his thinning hair damp against his forehead and his cavernous face shining wet in the light.

"I have nothing more to report," Severus said shortly, and sat.

"I feel we should have more information by this point," Arthur chimed in, leaning forward. Severus felt himself frown, just a little, and Arthur seemed to notice. "It's not a slight against you, Severus. I simply feel that something big is coming. Something he's working his way up towards. Do you have any idea of what it might be, Albus?"

"Some," the Headmaster said, with the barest hint of a nod. "Each less likely than the last. I believe he may look to bring more than just giants into his ranks as he grows more powerful. The Dementors have already proven themselves to be easily turned to more nefarious deeds than guarding a prison. It will be only a matter of time before he stages a mass release of the prisoners."

Across the table, Black had gone quite still. "I've already shown it can be done," he said hoarsely. "That's all he needs."

A few members of the Order traded uneasy glances. Severus couldn't blame them. The day Bellatrix Lestrange broke free of her cell would be a turning point in the coming war, one that he dearly hoped would come later rather than sooner. But he knew better than to wish too hard for that. Azkaban was not the impenetrable fortress he had once thought it was, as a child. It was a dank, crumbling ruin guarded by Dark creatures who were easily swayed to a different side if the price was right. Bellatrix Lestrange and many others would walk free once more. It was only a matter of time.

The second the meeting was adjourned, the room became quite empty. Without the warmth of so many bodies the air cooled, but Severus could still feel sweat rolling down the back of his neck as he unloaded the potions he'd brought for the Order onto a spare bit of counter space. It didn't take long for Lupin to join him.

"You returned Harry's map, didn't you?" were the first words he said.

"No, Lupin," he sighed, "I tossed it into the first rubbish bin that happened to catch my eye. _Yes, _I returned his map, you utter buffoon, and in the same condition as it had been when I found it."

"You mean when you stole it," Lupin said pleasantly.

Severus glared at him and disguised an attempt to cool down with a good shake of his robes, which billowed outward in a brief burst of relief before settling back down to stifle him. "Are you needing something?" he asked. "Or have you come over with the sole purpose of harassing me out of Black's house?"

The wolf managed to keep his composure for all of five seconds before his shell of pleasantness cracked away and the man beneath came out. "That night at the pub," he said quietly, "you told me to let Sirius know you had the Map."

"And?" Severus said, wholly unconcerned. "Did you?"

"Are you mad?" came the immediate response. "Sirius would have an aneurism if he knew what you had done. I won't be telling him anything, Severus, and now that I know you've returned Harry's property to him, I'd like for us to not speak of this again. _Or _have a repeat. This will stay between us."

"There seems to be a great deal of things that are staying between us lately." Severus busied himself with sorting the potions on the counter, though he knew there was no need for it. _You are behaving like a fool, _he told himself yet again.

"Have you had supper?" Lupin asked, looking him up and down.

"I'm not dining with the mutt, if that's what you're working towards," Severus sneered, turning to leave. He had essays to grade before the weekend was through, and for once in his teaching career he wanted to make decent headway on them instead of engaging in his usual Sunday night panic. "Have a wonderful evening nursing the drunken dog."

Before he could enter the stairwell, Lupin stepped round to block his path. "I don't mean here," he said quickly, before Severus could push him aside. "I mean we could go somewhere else."

Sighing, Severus grudgingly allowed himself to be nudged back into the kitchen. They were the only occupants now, the rest having fled to cooler parts of the house. "Where?" he asked once the desire for food won over his internal struggle. His stack of essays could wait. After all, he had all weekend to grade them. It was Friday, he hadn't eaten since the pot pie he'd had for lunch, and—damn his weakness—perhaps he had been wondering after Lupin all throughout their days of silence. He hadn't so much as received a letter since that night.

"There's always the Three Broomsticks," the wolf said, leaning against the counter. He, out of everyone who had been forced to spend time in this sweltering hellhole, seemed the most affected of them all. His face was as red as a cherry, so bright it made the scars on his cheek stand out as starkly as if they'd been painted on, and his hair was wet at the fringe and greying temples. Severus was suddenly, vividly reminded of how warm Lupin's skin normally felt, even outside of this room.

"You must be boiling in your own skin by now," he said softly, "or near to it."

"I'm fine," Lupin said, ever the liar.

"You're either in the midst of succumbing to heat stroke or working your way steadily towards it. Upstairs, wolf. Get somewhere cool." Severus once again made a move towards the stairs, and this time Lupin didn't try to stop him.

"No dinner, then?" came a tentative call from behind him.

Turning back round to fix him with a glare, Severus snapped, "You are awfully bold for a man who was left alone at a pub after being turned down for a proposition."

Lupin had been close behind him, but he stopped in his tracks then. He was grinning, Severus realized with a swoop of his stomach. "Pardon me?" he said incredulously, laughter laced through the words. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe it was you who propositioned _me_—as a way to brag about stealing a family heirloom, no less."

"A family heirloom," Severus scoffed, and then cut a glance towards the top of the stairs as a door closed somewhere above them. Footsteps thundered overhead and the banister creaked as someone began up the trek up to the second floor of the house. "Someone is due to come looking for us, wolf."

"Then we'd best leave now," Lupin said, placing a hand gingerly on Severus's shoulder, where it felt like fireworks had abruptly burst beneath his skin. "I hear Rosmerta serves fish and chips on Fridays."

oooo

TLDR from the second scene of this chapter: a student (whose name I used a HP name generator to make up lmao) comes to Severus in the middle of the night needing aid to treat infected injuries he received over the summer. Severus writes down the first name on the list of students he promised to give Lupin back in TAB.


End file.
